An Island of Predators
by Nate The Ape
Summary: My first fanfic! This one looks at a day in the life of many of Skull Island's creatures. Need to have read The World of Kong to really understand. Chapter Six is upand there's raptors in it! Reviews are greatly appreciated, good or bad.
1. Chapter 1:Peracerdon

Author's Comments: Like other people here, I was deeply impressed, blown away, and yes, touched deeply by King Kong when I saw it. However, one thing about the movie that I had a real problem with and frankly found disappointing was that it showed far too few of the creatures invented to populate Skull Island. This was because I had the fortune to receive and read The World of Kong before I saw the actual movie, and was looking forward to seeing many of them on screen, although I knew they wouldn't all be there. When even fewer creatures than I thought made their appearance, it was a major letdown. But to honor and make up for some of the "deleted" creatures, I've written this story to give them a place in the sun too, as well as to expand somewhat further on the lives of a few of the creatures that were shown on the screen. I've even added some unique smaller creatures of my own to this island time forgot. As for the story itself, it takes place during a single day on Skull Island, with each chapter focusing on the events of one animal's life during that period, and covers two or three species from each distinct ecosystem.

Disclaimer: As much as I wish that I could say otherwise, King Kong, Skull Island, the story, and its creatures are all the property of Peter Jackson, Universal Pictures, RKO Productions, and Weta Workshop. That should cover it.

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**November 1903, Skull Island.**

**30 years before the Denham Expedition, 40 years before destruction of island.**

Chapter One.

Sunrise in the tropics is shockingly abrupt, with the crimson sun vaulting over the horizon "like thunder" as Kipling expressively put it. Sunup on Skull Island was no exception to the rule. Most of its inhabitants though, had no interest in its majesty and beauty. To them it meant nothing more than a changing of the guard, a time to sleep and rest if they were creatures of the night, and a new day of trying to sustain life while not being fed open for the diurnal ones on this island so packed with predators.

One of the first of the latter to be woken was a male Peracerdon, or Green Fisher-Dragon, as laymen would later call his kind. Opening his eyes, the 14-foot theropod yawned, showing a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth, and rolled to his feet. Stepping out of his loose nest of driftwood and dried seaweed, the Peracerdon walked out of the jagged cave he called home, casually leaping nine feet down to another ledge, then seven more feet to the ground itself.

His cave was in a rocky, jagged headland in one of the island's narrow northeastern bays, where a large stream flowed into the sea at the bay's head, supporting a fair-sized mangrove forest teeming with fish. In addition, the bay also featured a fair number of patchy coral reefs, and even two or three sand beaches due to its relative stability.

Although he could and did catch fish quite well in the powerful surf that lashed the cliffs and headlands, the Peracerdon preferred to stalk fish in the calmer waters himself, since it was easier to see them underwater and there were also more to be caught in these habitats. Before he headed up the beach however, there was something important that he had to do.

Going over to a worn log of driftwood a dozen yards from his cave, he lifted his snout and scent-marked it with his two throat glands, reaffirming the message that this was _his _sleeping den to other males. Like others of his kind, the Peracerdon didn't have a real territory that he defended, just a general home range where he fished and traveled. Indeed, he'd even tolerate another male fishing near him, as long as the stranger didn't get any closer thanthirtyfeet. A female, of course, could get as close as she liked, as long as she showed proper respect. A cave or crevice that was high enough, big enough, and of course stable enough to be a proper den though, was a precious commodity, one to be jealously guarded.

Instead of walking along the beach towards the stream delta right away, the Peracerdon decided to get himself a small breakfast right then and there, going out into the water where a small ridge of rock blocked some of the force of the waves, creating fairly clear conditions for fishing. Going out into the water until it was up to his thighs, the theropod wrapped his feet around the rocks, a special sort of ratcheting mechanism in his tendons keeping him locked in place.

He waited for fifteen minutes, scanning the water until a smallish red octopus came by. Striking with the accuracy of a heron, the Peracerdon impaled it on his teeth and bolted it down. Three minutes later, a small crab came by. It too, was crunched and consumed.

But these were ultimately just small snacks, hardly enough to satisfy the dinosaur. Leaving the surf behind, he continued up the beach until he came to a great rock ridge going out into the sea, and behind it he could smell urine and dung, while bawling and bleating sounds rung in his ears. A human being would likely have found the jagged, thirty-foot ridge a tough customer to tackle, but the Peracerdon found it about as difficult as climbing a steep set of stairs.

As he started to climb, he passed a Limusaur scraping mussels from a rock face with its bulldog-like jaws and crunching them up. The two did not bother each other.

Coming over the top, the Peracerdon saw what he'd been expecting, a colony of Skull Island fur seals. Descendants of a group of Australian fur seals that by chance had taken a wrong turn and decided to make the island their home, the open beaches gave Skull Island's seals comfortable places to breed, where they could see predators coming, and rock ramparts gave additional protection to some colonies. But not always.

Carefully leaping down the ridge, the Peracerdon's arrival sent the seals hysterically barking in alarm. As he slunk up to the colony, the cows grabbed their new pups by the nape, moving them out of the way or close to their sides where they could be better defended. As for the Peracerdon, although he was hungry, he also wasn't stupid. Fur seals were surprisingly fast on land, and a protective mother could give a deep, painful bite.

Instead, the theropod hunted unguarded pups, left alone and unprotected while their mothers were out fishing. Running right at a cluster of seals was one easy way to hunt them, and any pups that weren't defended or moved were fair game. He also used trickery to catch pups, lying down on the warm sand and striking a relaxed, nonchalant pose, as if meat was the last thing on his mind. Intensely curious, and also mistaking his dark form for an adult, pups would quickly approach him only to discover that this creature wasn't so benign after all.

Deciding to flop down and use the latter strategy, the Peracerdon was lowering himself to the sand when he heard a cow groaning and saw her go into a U-shape. She was just about to birth a pup, a perfect opportunity for the predator. He ran right for her, vaulting over and dodging other cows and pups as they frantically tried to get out of his way or drag offspring to safety. Seconds before he arrived, the cowgave birth toa female pup, turning to break the short umbilical cord and face the dinosaur at the same time.

Weak as she felt, the mother seal still rotated around on her fore flippers, trying to bite or at least parry away the Peracerdon as he danced around her, while the wet pup huddled in confusion against her flank. But the dinosaur saw a sudden opening, and with in one fast jab, lunged at the pup, grabbing what he wanted as the cow bawled out and the pup screamed. Avoiding a snap from the mother, he carried off the hard-earned delicacy and happily bolted it as the mother seal calmed down and gave her new daughter her first drink of milk. Thankfully for them, this time it was just the succulent afterbirth that he'd been after.

Still hungry, the Peracerdon went back over to the seals again, where he consumed another afterbirth and then found a dead pup on the sand, accidentally crushed the evening before when the harem bull chased and briefly fought a rival. Picking the little body up and holding it in his hands, he soon ensured that it didn't go to waste.

It was midmorning now, and still somewhat hungry, he decided to leave the fur seals to go catch fish in the mangroves around the head of the bay. As he continued walking, he stumbled across another male coming in the opposite direction, out to hunt seal pups himself.

Both males froze, and then cautiously approached each other. Realizing the other Peracerdon was also a male, he first yawned, displaying his sharp teeth and shutting his jaws with a hard snap in a mild threat. The other male did the same, and then began clacking his jaws while slowly waving his tail in a slightly more forceful display. The Peracerdon responded in kind, as both males still slunk towards each other, standing as tall as possible.

Then, with only ten feet between them and their eyes locked, the fisher-dragons suddenly agreed to disagree, relaxing and letting each other pass without incident. They'd never intended to fight anyway, just to remind the other that they were male and to be respected, preserving their dignity. If the encounter had involved a den or breeding female though, it would've been much more violent.

Reaching the edge of the mangrove swamp, he picked his way through the tangle of sand, mud, and roots, finding a nice sloping beach going into a channel. An Aciedactylus passing by saw him and instinctively started to show off her great bladelike hand claws, but then identified the intruder as harmless and continued on her way. Wading out, he chose a spot near an old Ligocristus skull, a feature sure to attract fish. Smaller fish soon began to return, but they were too spooked at first to come close. After twenty minutes though, a 9-inch long silver mono came with range. It was immediately caught and consumed, starting off the day's real fishing.

During the next three hours, occasionally moving to new sites, the Peracerdon caught himself a foot-long silver needlefish pursuing prey of its own, a pair of archerfish, a threadfin butterflyfish, a good-sized mud crab, a spotted scat, a bird wrasse, and in one channel a snapper so big that he had some trouble getting it down.

As the heat grew more intense, the Peracerdon grew hotter and uncomfortable himself. The tide was now rapidly coming in too, submerging the shallow sandbar where he'd been doing his latest bout of fishing. So, crop stuffed with seafood, he casually entered the deeper water and headed for higher ground. Kicking his partly webbed feet like a duck and lashing his muscular tail like a crocodile, he swam the 60-foot wide channel in no time, stepping out onto dry land and going over to the cool, pleasantly humid shade of a big mangrove, where he stretched out and spent the remainder of the afternoon resting and digesting his satiating meal of fish, watching the herons and ibises fishing and searching out prey themselves.

When the sun finally sunk lower in the sky and lost some of its ferocity, the theropod arose, shook himself, and began heading back to his sleeping cave. As he walked along the shore, feeling at ease and in good spirits, he decided to play a bit, picking up a medium-sized stick in his jaws and flipping it into the air over and over again, catching it each time. He held it in the side of his jaws and tugged at it with a hand, sometimes twitching the stick back and forth. Getting tired of that, he began putting it into a ghost crab burrow, reaching with his jaws to pull it out and repeating the process again.

On the seventh time he did this, he suddenly heard a crunch of gravel and then footfalls on the beach. Fast, heavy, and much too close. He immediately stood upright, whipping around to see a twenty-two foot female Tartarusaurus running right for him. With a gobbling bark of alarm, he immediately broke into a terrified run, tearing across the beach with the Tartarusaurus hard on his heels. Although she was a huge, ponderous-looking beast, he knew full well that she could cover a short distance with deceptively quick speed, and had good stamina to back her up besides, with immensely powerful jaws. And those jaws would be biting out his life very soon if he didn't find a way to outrun or outmaneuver her.

Fortunately for him though, he was also quite fast, with his two legs making him a much more efficient runner, and his lighter body giving him greater speed and agility. The Tartarusaurus was gaining on him, and he dodged sharply, getting out of her way as she plowed forward and putting more ground between the two of them. He couldn't slow down just yet though, and his pursuer continued to keep up.

In front of them and off to the left now was a great basalt pillar three stories near the edge where the jungle gave way to the coast, with a partial staircase carved into it by a former civilization. Putting on an extra burst of speed, the Peracerdon dodged the Tartarusaur again, and used that extra second of time to run right for the monolith, crossing the remainingseventy-five feet to leap up the partial stairway and then using his sharp, powerful hand and foot claws to climb the rest of the way.

Reaching the pillar herself, the Tartarusaurus immediately reared up to try to catch her escaping prey, and got so close that the Peracerdon felt her hot, moist breath on his tail for a few fearful moments. But he rapidly got to the pillar's top, where he then sat and looked down at the coast's most terrible predator while panting from fear and exhaustion.

The Tartarusaur gave a cavernous growl, and reared up on her hind legs again, trying to reach her meal that was so close yet so far away. But both reptiles knew how this was inevitably going to turn out, and after rearing up several more times just to make sure, the Tartarusaurus gave one last menacing growl, shook her head in irritation, and loped off down the beach to find a meal elsewhere.

It took a while for the Peracerdon's nerves to calm down. It took even longer to get up the courage to come down, in case the Tartarusaur had come back to ambush him. Cautiously, he walked further up the beach, skirting the broken and steep landward edge of the fur seal colony. He saw his would-be killer again much further away among some boulders and froze-but relaxed on seeing that she was eating a pair of seals that she'd just killed and so was no longer a danger to him.

Navigating the ever-increasing amounts of fractured rock on an ever-narrower beach, he returned to the cave where he slept as the bottom edge of the sun began to touch the horizon. He sniffed around for abouta hundredyards in each direction, and noted with pleasure that there was no trace of any other males. Walking up the beach some more, he stopped climbed up a slope of rocks, using the dim light as the best time to hunt seabirds returning from a day of fishing. Picking a space with a sloping ledge, he was able to leap to the right and grab a red-footed booby passing just four feet above, bringing it back down to the gravel shore to pluck and eat in the rapidly fading light, holding the bird down with his foot while ripping off and bolting down chunks of meat.

By the time his last meal was finished, the sun was almost completely set, and the thick fogbanks were returning again. After a quick bath in the surf, the Peracerdon leaped up to the ledge he was so familiar with, and then to the cave. Entering back inside, he crouched in his nest, laid down, shifted once, twice, and then went to sleep, having survived another Skull Island day. Seven hours later, the first rays of sunshine entered his cave, and the cycle began again.


	2. Chapter 2:Tartarusaurus

Author's notes: sighs All the pressure you're under in college sure can make it difficult to find time for your fanfiction, can't it? Nevertheless, I managed to get up this second chapter, where we'll be seeing a day in the life of Skull Island's most feared coastal dweller-and it's not the natives. Without any further ado, now here's chapter two kiddies!

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**Tartarusaurus.**

When you're the biggest and fiercest predator living on Skull Island's beaches, it goes without saying that you can sleep anywhere you like, even right out in the open. As a matter of fact, being 22 feet long and having a head and neck that combined were as long as a horse's body, the female Tartarusaurus almost really _had _to sleep out in the open.

That was where the first rays of dawn found her, sleeping up against a large log of driftwood in a depression she'd dug out of the mixture of gravel and sand that covered the eastern beach. Although she looked very much like a four-legged dinosaur, she was actually descended from a family of reptiles closely related to crocodiles called poposaurs, which contained such Triassic killers like Postosuchus. And like her ancestors had been, she was every bit as savage.

Also unlike a dinosaur, she was cold-blooded. True, her mass helped retain some heat, but she still had to warm up first if she was to have the energy needed to hunt and feed. So, picking a nice semi truck-sized boulder of granite, the chilled Tartarusaur weakly walked over, flopped down onto it, and waited as the sun shot over the horizon like a ball of fire.

Soon, it burned off all the thick mist, and began to get steadily stronger. The sunlight felt great against her thick, plated skin, and she soaked in the heat with the relish of any human sun-worshiper over the next two hours while the yellow orb arced higher. Finally hot enough, now she felt full of vigor and energy, her metabolism running nicely as she jumped off the great boulder and onto the beach, heading northwest to hunt. Until this moment, the Tartarusaur would only be a dangerous creature if she had been disturbed. Now she was simply dangerous.

Walking along a beach of gravel and broken rock, she came across a Limusaur, a strange, 3-foot amphibian adapted to feeding on shellfish in the surf. Crawling over the rock, his eyes widened and he plunged into a shallow crevice for safety. For the Tartarusaur though, it was no deterrent in the least. Reaching in with her left sickle claw, she groped, twisted, and then hooked the Limusaur right through a shoulder, dragging him out. A quick, brutal bite and shake, then she bolted him down in two bone-cracking bites.

Besides being a hunter, the Tartarusaur was also an unapologetic scavenger, and the fertile seas always gave up their share of food, fresh or deliciously rotten. Smelling fish, she trotted over to the edge of the surf to find a 10-pound snapper with its head bitten off, probably by a reef shark. Picking it up with surprising delicacy, she swallowed it whole in one easy motion.

She continued to walk along the beach, walking among and over old stairways or jagged, broken rock with a remarkably easy grace. Fishing Peracerdon on seeing her immediately kept their distance or expertly climbed up the cliffs beyond her reach, as well as swimming out to little islets where the predator couldn't reach them. The Tartarusaur ignored them, knowing full well the only way she could ever catch one of the dinosaurs was to surprise them at close range.

Then she came across another live creature, one that tasted great and was helpless on land, but had to be dealt with very carefully. It was a 4-foot olive sea snake, washed up on the beach during high tide in the night. Unable to crawl an inch on land with his flattened body, he could only slowly writhe helplessly as he started to bake in the sun. His lethal venom however, able to kill a man within half an hour, was very much a danger to be reckoned with, and his distant cousin knew it. She had ways of getting the job done though, and jabbed at the sea snake's head.

As best he could, the sea snake struck back, but the Tartarusaur swiftly drew back her hand before he could connect. Then she jabbed at the olive sea snake again, and just like before, he tried to bite her. But this time, the bigger reptile met him with the other forefoot, turning to the side and bringing the flat of her sickle claw right down on top of his skull in a well-timed maneuver, crushing it. She waited for a minute or two, continuing the pressure until she was sure this lethal prey was dead.

Unlike humans, most predators don't bother with gloating, even if they took out something dangerous. Nor did the Tartarusaurus. She ripped at the snake, eating the body in three bites before continuing her quest for food. Her belly was now a third of the way full, but naturally she sought more meat, and the day was still young at just midmorning. All of a sudden, she caught the scent of another Tartarusaur a couple hundred yards down the beach. There was also the scent of another carcass, a large one bearing the fragrant smell that marked it as a mammal. It got all her digestive juices flowing.

Approaching, she saw that the other Tartarusaur was a younger male, his jaws and muzzle stained red from the dead creature he'd been ripping at. It was a horse who had died of seasickness while being shipped by boat over to Batavia, and had then been tossed overboard to wash up on this forbidden island's shores.

Cautiously, she approached him and the dead horse as he regarded her suspiciously, growling in a mild warning. If this had been two months later during the breeding season, he would've had no problem allowing her to feed alongside him. But right now, he couldn't help but understandably be possessive of his newfound meal.

Still, being a female and at about the same size as the male, the Tartarusaur was warily optimistic that she stood a good chance of being tolerated at this meal, the two eating together in an uneasy truce. Eating at the horse's abdomen, the male locked his black eyes with the female's, growling in irritation again and again as she warily sidled up to the head end and began tearing meat from the head and neck. If his visitor had been another male, there would've been a good, serious fight, one that could end in only one animal having the equine. But since she was female, he managed to just barely tolerate her. As for the other Tartarusaur, she growled and stared back while she ate, showing her determined confidence. The rich red meat tasted delectable to her, flavored just perfectly by saltwater and early decomposition. She even ate the bones, cracking them to enjoy the fat-rich marrow.

For the next hour, the pair ate together warily and grudgingly, growling, hissing, staring each other down, sometimes even roaring and snapping at one another in bluff. And like children sometimes do with that last cookie or piece of candy, the Tartarusaurs got worked up the most over the final hunk of horse carcass. The male gave in and allowed the roaring female to eat it.

With the food gone, both animals calmed down to a state of indifference, and went their separate ways, the female continuing her trek northwest, the stuffed male going higher up the beach to sleep off a successful morning's worth of feeding among some rocks. The other Tartarusaur felt strongly like doing the same, but since she was a little bigger than the male, it meant she also needed a little more food.

About five minutes later, she found a 3-foot guitarfish, a ray-like relative of sharks that was very much like a streamlined, bottom dwelling cross between the two animals. Another shark had fatally mauled this one too, taking a nice chunk out of its shoulder. Full of horsemeat, the reptile nonetheless managed to get every last bite down her huge gullet. It had been a very good morning, and now her stomach too was telling her it was quitting time.

Going over to a big ledge at the base of one of the cliffs, she stepped up onto it, laid down on her left side, and rested. Contentedly basking in the blazing midday sun, she lazed away much of the afternoon, enjoying the terrific heat and the feeling of meat being digested in her belly as her body temperature climbed. She watched the day's second high tide come in, covering much of the beach, and regarded the birds as they patrolled or dove for fish in the shallows. Sometimes she actively slept for a while, and sometimes just calmly relaxed, half-awake. When the heat became too much for her, she'd go out into the surf for a while, immersing much of her body and walking around in it as the waves crashed over and against her.

A further way to cool down came in the middle of the afternoon, when right on schedule a rainstorm rolled in, bucketing down like crazy for an hour and then moving off to the west as the Tartarusaurus took the opportunity to drink from the newly formed pools of water in the rocks. The rain also made the coastal air and indeed, everything more humid, conditions that suited the huge reptile just fine, although many humans would find it stifling.

As the Tartarusaur metabolized her meal, much of it went to her swollen, almost sweet potato shaped tail as fat. Like a leopard gecko or gila monster, these deposits of fat in her tail acted as food stores that she could live on whenever hunting and finding food was tough, allowing her to go weeks without a substantial meal if need be.

After a while, the sun began to get lower in the sky, meaning the afternoon was now winding down. Having had her fill of soaking up the heat anyway, the Tartarusaur stepped down onto the beach, and began walking again.

She was now somewhat hungry again after basking and increasing her digestion rate--not so hungry that she couldn't go without food, but still ready and willing to take prey if she got the chance. Even more importantly, the evenings concealing shadows made the best and perfect time to _really_ hunt. Once more, any animals on this beach now had better watch out.

Cleverly, the Tartarusaur now kept to the higher parts of the beach, covered in loose, random collections of bushes and volcanic rocks sticking out of the broken terrain. It made hiding much easier, and allowed her to rush out to trap prey between her and the sea, or circle around and cut off the escape of prey that did try to seek shelter there. The beach was becoming sandier now, and the sun even lower in the sky.

As she picked her way among the rocks and bushes, scanning the beach below for prey, she suddenly saw a Peracerdon on the sand beach, playing with a stick and utterly unaware of her presence. Peracerdon were swift runners, expert climbers on all kinds of cliffs, and very good swimmers, making it a hard thing indeed to catch one. But this one was distracted by his fun, putting the stick down a crab burrow, reaching in with his jaws, and then pulling it out again to repeat the performance.

The Tartarusaur could not believe her good luck. At 14 feet long, the theropod would make an excellent dinner before she retired for the night. So making even more effort to be stealthy and quiet, she stalked the Peracerdon at an angle, who instead of taking a quick look to check for danger like he should've, just continued his game with the stick. This was almost too easy.

Just two hundred yards away, she stepped on some pea gravel, making a small _crunch _underfoot. Knowing that she had just blown her own cover, the Tartarusaur went for broke and charged her quarry. Besides, although she'd had to attack a little earlier then she would've liked, she was confident that she'd still run him down anyway.

Looking up, the Peracerdon gave the gobbling bark of alarm his kind used, and whipped around, breaking into a desperate run. She came hauling after. Now she was closing the gap, ready to bite into his tail and yank him off his feet. Then she'd have her meal.

At the last second though, the Peracerdon dodged sharply, sending the larger reptile skidding forward a few precious yards from her own momentum before she could turn and continue the chase. Now he'd gained some more ground as he ran ahead. The Tartarusaur was starting to tire a bit now. But she still stood a very good chance of catching him, and redoubled her efforts.

The theropod had just enough room to carry out an escape tactic if he wanted to, and although there weren't really any high cliffs here, it did cross her vague mind that it was strange that he didn't try to go leap in the sea and outswim her with his crocodile-like tail. Maybe he'd utterly lost his head. Then she saw in front of them what his intended refuge was.

A great basalt pillar was sticking up from the upper part of the beach. At that instant of her comprehension, the Peracerdon made another sharp dodge, gaining even more of a lead on the tiring poposaur, then ran to the far side of the pillar, bounding up the partial staircase and then climbing the rest of the way like a leopard with the claws on all four of his limbs. Reaching the base herself now, the Tartarusaurus reared up on her hind legs like a bear, trying to bite into the animal pushing himself up the pillar at warp speed. For a couple hopeful moments, her teeth were close enough to scrape his tail. But not bite it.

Reaching the top, the Peracerdon looked down at her, his eyes wide and panting heavily. Tired, she was panting somewhat too. The Tartarsaur did not like to lose, especially when she'd been so close. Giving a deep growl to express her frustration, she reared up again in another attempt to reach her prize. This time though, there was a good 12 feet between the predator and her prey. And she couldn't climb it.

Thinking things over, she tried rearing up several more times at different positions, but got no closer. So close, and yet so far. It just wasn't fair.

Disappointment doesn't equal blind stupidity by any means though. After giving one final growl and shaking her head in helpless irritation, the Tartarusaur accepted the inevitable, and loped away in search of other chances at getting food. Going back up onto the landward side of the beach, she again started picking her way through the random cover and long shadows.

Then she smelt the urine of her favorite prey, which meant only one thing. A colony of fur seals. Keeping to the cover of the rocks, she very carefully stalked over to the right side of the breeding beach, listening to the animals barking. Then, still as unobtrusively as possible, she walked down the side a ways, putting herself in a prime position to cut off a few seals from the sea. Fur seals have somewhat poor vision out of the water, and the light was dimming. So they didn't see the Tartarusaurus until she was almost upon them.

Breaking from cover, she ran the 80 feet to the nearest seals as they turned and galloped for the sea on their flippers. With a savage blow from a sickle claw, she raked a cow right down the flank in a deep gash. The seal desperately tried to get away, but was flipped over by another slashing blow across the back. Finally, the Tartarusaur ripped a big bite out of the seal's left shoulder, crippling and mortally wounding her at the same time.

Leaving the first victim behind, she went for another seal, this one an adolescent bull. Hooking him in the hindquarters, she pulled the twisting seal to her. Frantically, he tried to bite his killer in the face, but she anticipated it and bit into the back of his neck, dispatching the young male with a hard crunch and quick shake. Most of the seals had escaped now, except for the young pups that couldn't possibly swim. Thankfully for them though, Tartarusaurs generally deemed pups as too small to be worth eating.

There was a juvenile female lagging behind, and the Tartarusaurus now attacked her. One would think after having just already killed two seals, she wouldn't need to kill still more. These animals were rich in nourishing fat however, and they also came here only for the winter and early spring, making them a seasonal food source. So the poposaur tried to kill or badly cripple as many as she could, in order that she could feed off her multiple kills for a much longer time. This time though, although her attacker was barely able to scratch her, the seal managed to escape into the sea.

Returning back to her victims, the Tartarusaur stuffed both of them into her fanged mouth, dragging them off to a site several hundred yards away among some granite boulders and outcrops. In the fading light, she began her feast, gorging herself on blubber and fishy-tasting seal flesh. Fairly far away, she did see another Peracerdon, maybe the one she'd attacked and lost. But she dismissed it and continued bolting down meat from her kills as the sun went down and the fur seals very cautiously returned to the beach that she'd left.

She ate and ate, not finishing off her catch until it was two hours after dark, and no creature dare disturbed her, except for scavenging ghost crabs and Cunapredators. Then, her belly _really_ full now from two fur seals, she staggered up the beach beyond the high-tide mark, dug out another deep depression under a rock outcrop, got herself comfortable, and went to sleep, safe in the knowledge that nothing would or could challenge her. For the next three days, this Tartarusaurus wouldn't have to worry about food after such a meal. It was good to be the king.


	3. Chapter 3:Aciedactylus

Slumps back in chair, exhausted. Man, this fanfiction stuff sure is pretty hard work! If only I'd known. But none the less...I got my three chapters for the three beasts I picked from the World of Kong's first chapter, the one about the coasts and villages, completely done! does the "I've got a section done" happy jig And one other thing. Remember how I said in the beginning how I'd put some made-upanimals of my own in here? Well, I've put two of them in here for you to find, and even a little inside joke in one's name.

As for my reviewers:

**Tallacus: **Thanks so much for being my first reviewer! Glad to see you like it so far.

**Otacon: **Don't worry dude, I know that it's utter fiction. I just wished that more of the book's creatures had had justice done to them by being shown in the movie, and that in turn made me want to come and play in Skull Island's jungles. Thanks for your positive review too by the way. :)

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Chapter Three.

On the northern coast of Skull Island, almost exactly north-northwest of the village was its largest estuary, a fertile yet forbidding labyrinth of mudflats, sandbars, and mangroves. Every creature here was ruled by the implacable tides, and for that reason the Aciedactylus had sensibly dug out her den in a sand hillock several dozen yards from the high tide mark.

Forming the bottom part of the entrance was a partly buried carved granite pillar, part of which showed a woman nursing a child. In an ironic connection between the island's past and present, the Aciedactylus using it as her front porch was herself a mother, sticking her T-rex like head out now to smell and listen for predators. There were none, and so she slipped out into the dying mist, revealing her 14-foot body as she stepped over the pillar and did another anti-predator scan.

There was nothing, so she gave a chirping snort, her kind's way of saying "All clear." Immediately, half a dozen chicks scrambled out of the den. About the size of large ducks and covered in buff and chocolate brown scales with black mottling to serve as camouflage, they were proportionately more slender and longer limbed than their mother, with bigger feet and eyes. Only a month old, they leapt up over the pillar and fell into a loose, excited step behind their mother as she headed off for another day's foraging in the mangrove swamp.

Like ostriches or turkeys, although the chicks could feed themselves, they needed their mother's vigilance and the protection her bladelike hand claws offered if they expected to survive. As a female, the Aciedactylus had a red-orange bottom to her tail, and the chicks followed this as she moved. For her part, the theropod always kept a constant lookout for predators even while feeding or resting. This was an island where you could never be too careful, to say the very least.

Already there'd been losses, and these six chicks were the survivors of a nest of ten eggs. First, while she was off getting a drink, a water monitor had raided her sand and mangrove leaf nest, digging out and eating two of her eggs. When the chicks did hatch, one had been seized and eaten by a saltwater crocodile while they swam a channel, and a bull shark had taken another one in a similar situation.

They were generally safe enough on land however, and they came across a pool of water in the sand, home to a group of mudskippers. As their mother drank, the chicks excitedly chased the weird fish around, trying to run them down but failing as the fish hopped into the sea. Their mother watched for a bit after getting enough water in her, then gave a mild trumpeting call through her secondary nostrils, closing her primary ones and forcing air through the others to let them know it was time to move on. She was after oysters and crabs.

As they walked among pools and waded shallow channels left by the still receding tide, she came across a fist-sized land hermit crab, clunking along in its borrowed shell. This time, its protection failed as the theropod bent down and crushed the whole thing in her peg-like teeth, flicking the shell pieces aside and swallowing the hermit in two gulps. The family then came across a whole legion of fiddler crabs, displaying and waving their claws as they picked algae out of the mud.

Although the thumb-sized crabs were really too small to make much of a meal for her, fiddlers were perfect prey for the chicks, already rushing forward to chase them. They did catch and crunch a few, but most escaped back into their burrows. The theropod decided to help her chicks out a bit. Going to one of the holes, she jabbed a hand claw inside, flushing a fiddler out-and right into the jaws of one of her sons.

For the next fifteen minutes, she went around the colony, sticking in a claw and driving out fiddler after fiddler, until all her chicks had had at least a helping of prey. All the while, she attentively watched for anything that might be stalking them behind the mangroves. She still hadn't gotten much of a meal though, and gave another low trumpet to call her chicks again.

Now the Aciedactylus encountered a large black crab in a shallow, muddy pool, weighing maybe a pound or so. Raising its claws in defense, it snapped and whipped around as she circled, poking at him with her own. Crabs could certainly give a nasty pinch to the nose or face, so she wanted to take him from behind. Seeing her chance, she grabbed the crab by the back, and bit down hard. Before eating her latest catch though, she lowered her head and kindly allowed her chicks to take some bites from the smashed parts before finally eating it.

On some slightly higher ground, they encountered a small structure of mud, almost like a small termite mound. The Aciedactylus knew what that meant. Her chicks, playing along after her also needed to know as well, so she gave a cough and a mild braying sound through her secondary nostrils, causing them to stop and watch attentively. If her call could be put into human terms, it would be something like "Now you kids listen up and pay attention, 'cause you're all going to learn something new."

Going over to the chimney of hardened mangrove mud, she drove one of her stiletto claws in near the edge and carefully used it like a spade to cut away some of the side. As her brood watched, she did it again, cutting away even more of the mound. Four more times she did this, getting closer and deeper to the center, always taking care not to break a claw, until she reached her prize.

A foot-long mud lobster was revealed, and as it tried to scramble away, the Aciedactylus grabbed it in her jaws, enjoying her good-sized catch. The chicks were astounded. It wasn't the first time they'd seen their mother eat mud lobsters, but now they knew something about how one went about it, their brains soaking up the knowledge like sponges. She carried out the same procedure at another mound, but this time uncovered an unappealing Javan file snake, which she let go. A third though, yielded yet another of the giant shrimp relatives, which went the way of the first.

Continuing on, the theropod moved more slowly now among the mangroves, her wide, partly webbed feet preventing her from sinking, while her chicks captured small crabs and rooted out snails wherever they could. A deep tidal channel was in front of them now, where the mangrove roots were always covered by water. There were mangrove oysters just covering the submerged prop roots, and she waded out to one large tree, fish scattering before her as she stuck her head underwater to feed. Seeing a blue swimming crab buried in the sand, the Aciedactylus lunged downward and plucked it out, raising her head to eat.

Before putting it under again, she looked around first. Her chicks were all together, sticking their heads underwater too to find snails like mangrove whelks or searching out small crabs in burrows or debris. There were no Nefundusaurs, crocodiles, or sea eagles in sight, so she ducked her head underwater.

Now, the real function of her high-mounted second set of nostrils came into play. With her head down, she breathed through them as she rooted out snails in the shallows, and plucked mangrove oyster after oyster off the tree roots, occasionally sealing both sets to get crabs or oysters closer to the bottom. If she had to, the Aciedactylus could dive to a depth of eight feet and root out shellfish, although there was usually no need for that.

Then, raising her head to check on her brood for the umpteenth time, she saw something very worrisome. As they'd been feeding themselves, the chicks had naturally spread out a bit, but always remaining within view. One female chick however, was gone. Just gone.

Getting out of the water and running right over, the Aciedactylus called her chicks to her and smelled around, finding her daughter's scent on a thin path leading into the mangroves. So she cantered right down it, finding her just three hundred yards away as she was trying to catch a tide pool skink. Chasing after the lavender-bronze lizard, the chick was surprised to have her growling mother suddenly pop up right in front of her, and even more so to receive a hard blow from the side of a claw that sent her sprawling in the sand. Harsh as it might seem, there was a clear message sent. Next time, the visitor might not be her.

With a chastened, shaking, and disciplined chick falling back into line, the dinosaur went back to the channel, wading across it to the other side and continuing on. Reaching another channel, she went into the shallows with her chicks following. Suddenly the theropod saw her favorite prey in the world standing on a mudflat, a big purple mud crab weighing about four pounds. Mudcrabs are very good eating, and she wasted no time in doing just that, biting off one of the claws and then boring back in to smash the crab in her jaws. Nearby, she found another one, in a pool under a tree's prop roots. Prodding it with a claw, she flushed it out into the open and ate it as well. For a couple minutes more, she grubbed through the exposed mudflat for clams, finding and eating about a dozen.

The dinosaur was feeling good. She'd eaten enough crab and oyster now to fill her up for the morning, and all the chicks had also eaten well. Then there was a sudden squeal, and whipping around, the Aciedactylus fully expected to see one of her chicks helpless in a predator's grasp. But no, it was another chick having an amusing, if distressing end to his morning of crab catching. In one of the pools of water on the mudflats, some small fish had gotten trapped, and were dying of oxygen loss. A red mangrove crab, as wide across as four fingers, had taken the opportunity to grab and start to eat one.

The chick had seen this however, and boldly snatched the crab's meal to eat for himself after a brief tug-of-war. Then he went for the crab itself, but got a nice hard pinch right on a nostril for his efforts, making him squeal and jump around in distress as the crab hung there like some bizarre nose ornament while he tugged at it with his hands. Finally, after comically flinging the mangrove crab around and even trying to kick it for a couple seconds, he turned his head and bit into the crab's side, crunching into its carapace as best he could and eating it all as the crustacean shed its claw and tried to get away. All that was left was the claw attached to his face, and that too was scraped off and eaten.

The sun was close to its zenith now, and the mother Aceidactylus felt like a good drink. Smelling an outflowing, slow creek maybe three hundred yards away, she walked over to it with her chicks obediently following once more. A purple heron flushed from the creek as they arrived, while a very young Tartarusaur unhurriedly loped off into the swamp. The water tasted great, and both mother and chicks had their fill of fairly fresh water.

Leaving the creek behind, she led her brood to a small lagoon, flopping down on the firm beige mud to enjoy the heat. Lying on her side, the crab-eating theropod happily broiled in the sun for the next hour, digesting her meal and watching her chicks as they chased, wrestled, and mock displayed to each other, sometimes taking time to sun themselves as well or attack the moths, spiders, small crabs, and prawns they stumbled open. Sandpipers and Pacific swallows worked the flats and lagoon edges, while little egrets and striated herons waded in the shallows, hunting small prey like gobies and shrimp.

Eventually, the Aciedactylus became too hot and gave another mild trumpeting call to summon her chicks before moving off to find shade. Taking a drink from the brackish lagoon, she headed back into the mangroves at an angle, where she found an especially thick clump of trees and laid down again under them, with a small stream running nearby. Her chicks joined her, bellies full and finally out of energy, although they did have just enough to halfheartedly roll on top of and slap at each other.

As they rested and panted, mosquitoes viciously tortured them, drinking blood from between the scales and thin-skinned areas like the inner thigh. It was just something they had to endure though, and at least most of the bloodsuckers were normal-sized ones, not the huge robin-sized beasts found further inland.

All the while, the Aciedactylus calmly kept an eye out for any dangerous predators over the next two hours. Fortunately, the only potential threat she saw was a large male water monitor, coming into view about forty-five minutes into their siesta. And although he was big enough to possibly grab and eat a chick, she could tell from his demeanor that he wasn't interested in dinosaur. Instead, the monitor passed them by, tongue flicking, and went to a large log lying on the ground, where he began rapidly digging with his sharp claws.

The chicks were soon to learn yet another lesson about nature's sometimes savage ways, for as the water monitor kept digging, a whitebelly mangrove snake, 30 inches long and purplish-black, shot out from the other side of the log and tried to make a break for it across the mix of wet sand and leaves. With an incredible turn of speed, the monitor ran it down though, and the snake frantically whipped around, hissing and trying to bite back.

Like eagles or mongooses, monitor lizards are master snake killers, and this one proved to be just as adept. The Aciedactylus chicks watched in awe and amazement as the water monitor coolly bit down on and repeatedly shook the flailing whitebelly snake hard, throwing it against the ground as well and not stopping until it was a bloody, sandy mess. Then, in shockingly huge gulps, he bolted his kill down delightedly, even licking his chops in satisfaction. Duly impressed to say the least, all six chicks huddled tightly against their parent and protector, expecting they'd be next. But the huge lizard casually turned around and walked off into the brush, no doubt looking for more prey.

After two hours of resting in the cool shade, the Aciedactylus chicks were getting hungry again, and their mother decided to get up and lead them on another foraging trip, heading off again into the mangrove swamp along a deep channel. As she walked slowly, her brood dug and nosed out more small crabs, eating them in one or two bites. One male chick even got some red meat, in the form of a crab-eating frog he caught among some prop roots. There was were a few very anxious moments when the theropod heard a low hiss, turning around to see two of the chicks teasing and mock-attacking a mangrove pit viper that was crossing a strip of sand, but she sharply called them to come back and they obeyed right away.

The family then ran across a colony of soldier crabs, small bluish creatures with pale legs that oddly for a crab, walked forwards. Immediately, the chicks were among them, snapping up the crabs like candy. The crabs naturally went either right to their burrows or into the sea, and the young dinosaurs worked at getting them out. Meanwhile, their mother was eating more mangrove oysters of another tree, when she smelt a faint whiff of something dead. The scent of a large, dead, fish.

Calling her chicks again with that mild trumpet, she trotted towards the smell's source, several hundred yards away. As she burst through some low bushes, she saw that on a sandbar in a tidal channel lay _a whole dead tuna_! This was too good to pass up, and she waded through water up to her chest to the fish, her chicks swimming closely against her side. Getting out, she walked up to the carcass and bit into its belly.

The tuna wasn't too far gone, and tasted great. Her teeth however, were peglike and blunt, meant for crushing and mashing crabs and shellfish, not piercing or cutting. It was like trying to cut steak with a tent peg. But although it was tough going, she managed to tug off and shake loose bites of deliciously smelly tuna, tossing down the oily, energy-rich meat. As for her chicks, their teeth were somewhat more pointed, so they had a fairly easier time of it.

All creatures here were ruled by the tide however, and as she ate, the Aciedactylus felt seawater creep up her toes to her heel to the top of her ankle. She'd only eaten half as much of the tuna as she would've liked to, but if she didn't want to take a long, risky swim back to shore-not to mention endanger her offspring-she had to leave now. Reluctantly, she slipped into the water, now so deep that even she had to swim, paddling with her partly webbed feet and using her tail as part power and rudder. Her chicks resolutely joined her, and they all swam the widening, 45-foot turquoise strip of sea back to higher ground.

Now, it seemed like every creature in the estuary was moving, the air-breathers giving way to the sea, and the creatures of the sea coming to invade what was land. Naturally, wise predators were using this exodus as an opportunity to hunt. Archerfish knocked insects off branches with jets of water. Geckos and other lizards ate spiders and insects fleeing the water, while mangrove vipers, kites, and other predators took them in turn. Small fish coming in on the tide were caught by herons and egrets above, while jacks and squid stalked them below. Wayward crabs fell victim to octopuses and eels, and crabs on land searched out snails heading higher up the beaches, cracking them in their claws.

Even the Aciedactylus and other large land animals were caught up in this combination of retreating and killing. Calmly trotting towards the back mangroves, she suddenly caught the scent of, and then saw, something she had not wanted to encounter. It was a male _Palustroodon_ _englehorni_. Englehorn's wounding-tooth of the marsh.

Descended from Cretaceous troodontids, these lightly built, camouflage-patterned dinosaurs were restricted to the estuaries and salt marshes of Skull Island. Their name derived from both their preferred habitat, and the fact that on the fourth expedition to the island, Capitan Englehorn had earned the honor by shooting the very first specimen himself. Living in male-female pairs, the elusive predators traveled, slept, and hunted together, using their sharklike, serrated teeth to grab and rip into small or medium-sized prey-including dinosaur chicks. Since they were nocturnal hunters as a rule, one was generally safe from Palustroodon marauders during the day. But with so many animals moving back and forth as the tide changed, these smart, cunning hunters were presented with too good an opportunity to pass up.

The Aciedactylus gave a drawn-out, ringing shriek through her secondary nostrils, and all six of her chicks, knowing full well that they were in mortal danger, immediately gathered under her belly and between her legs. Growling savagely, she stretched out her arms, showing the twin blades of claws on each hand to the cautious Palustroodon. And she was deadly serious about it.

Sudden movement, and his mate came in from the side, trying to grab a groaning, squalling chick. Whipping around in a quarter-turn, the Aceidactylus swiped at the smaller dinosaur with her right hand, almost raking her across the face. Then the male Palustroodon leapt in himself, briefly grabbing a chick by the tail before her mother whirled around to confront him and he had to let go.

Ducking low, his mate struck like a snake at the huddled group, but then found herself knocked in the air and briefly pinched between the lethal claws of the Aceidactylus before somehow jumping and twisting loose. Amazingly, although she was bruised, the Palustroodon was unhurt.

The male came in from behind now, aiming right for a chick's side as his black head shot forward. Right at that moment though, the desperate chick leapt up into the air, flying over his attacker's neck, shrieking as he did so. Pivoting on her right foot, the Aceidactylus gave him a nasty kick in the shoulder before he could move away, while repelling his partner with a jab from her handclaws at the same time.

The two Palustroodon both hesitated for a bit, and the Aceidactylus used that half a chance to back into a thick mass of prop roots that offered partial protection from behind. Her chicks immediately slipped into the roots, while she stood in a boxer's stance, clawing the air and growling as the two Palustroodon came forward again.

The male made a bluff charge now, while his mate, hunkered down low, rushed the briefly exposed chicks. Anticipating this though, the Aceidactylus slashed with her claws at the carnivore. Yelping, the Palustroodon leapt right up into the air, barely avoiding a strike that would've ripped her open along the flank, and indeed had lightly grazed her there. Retreating, she rejoined her mate and they appraised the situation. Several more times they ran at the bigger theropod, hoping to get a chance at a chick. But their mother stood firm with grim determination, and after two or three minutes the Palustroodon pair got tired of Aceidactylus-baiting, leaving to find easier prey somewhere else.

Panting hard, the Aceidactylus watched them go. After they left, she waited for four more minutes, carefully sniffing around while her chicks sat tight among the thick roots. When she was sure that they hadn't circled back or were lying in ambush, she gave a cooing purr, an "All clear," signal to let her brood know it was safe to come out in the open again.

The tide was rising here now too, and the mother led her chicks through the estuary towards a sort of ridge, where the ground was high and dry. Trotting fast after their dangerous encounter, they climbed the gentle, wet and mucky slope, reaching an area of stable, moist sand. The theropod laid down in the shade and rested, her chicks doing the same right next to her. A minute or two later, she smelt the odor of Palustroodon yet again, fairly close by-but she saw that the pair was after a different prey.

It was a troop of Adrien's giant squirrels, cat-sized rodents with sleek fur that were colored mahogany above and straw-yellow below. Only living in wooded coastal habitats, they fed on coconuts, fruit, snails, seeds, flowers, and other nuts. After feeding and playing in the seaward mangroves, they also had to head to higher ground if they didn't want to swim back. That entailed leaping between trees, of course. Sometimes though, they needed to travel through short trees and on lower limbs, putting them within reach of predators.

And that was the exact thing the Palustroodon on their tail wanted. As the squirrels ran and leapt, they got onto some lower branches. The male of the pair leapt eight feet right in the air, plucking a male squirrel off a branch and running off with his catch. His mate also leapt right then, and she caught a half-grown female, shaking her as she followed her partner into the mangrove maze.

After that spectacular incident, things became more relaxed for the Aciedactylus and her brood. Saving energy, she slept lightly in the shade as the chicks laid beside her and played. In the humid swamp, geckos called out, and butterflies flew between the flowers. Then, right on schedule for the mid-afternoon, clouds rolled over the island and rain just came bucketing down on the mangroves.

For two and a half hours it rained continuously, puddles and rivulets forming in the mud and sand while the rain beat a tattoo on the leaves and rising water. The Aciedactylus loved the feeling of the cool wetness, standing up to drink from the puddles and feel it pelting on her scales. The chicks loved it too, splashing in the puddles, snapping at raindrops, and rooting in the rivulets just for fun.

But inevitably, the rain lost its appeal. So, soaked and getting cold, the Aciedactylus sought some shelter under a leaning tree, where the family relaxed and gazed out at the falling rain. When it finally came to a stop, the sun proclaimed that it was now late afternoon, and she decided that she'd best lead her chicks back to the sleeping den if they weren't to get caught out after dark.

Giving another mild trumpet as she got to her feet, the theropod started heading back along a more landward route to her den, her chicks faithfully following the orange-red bottom of her tail. It had been a good day of feeding, with everyone's stomach telling them that it was quitting time. Although she did stop to harvest a few mangrove oysters here and there, the Aciedactylus' half-mile return trip was an uneventful, focused business.

Reaching their familiar den, the Aciedactylus scanned for danger once more, and then laid down lengthwise on the stone pillar, enjoying the last of the sun's rays before it finally disappeared behind the mountains. Her chicks jumped around and played, chasing each other across the beach sands that they so resembled, and tugging their mother's tail.

When the twilight became darkness, the female Aciedactylus, full of shellfish and feeling sleepy, lowered her head and went back into her den, the chicks coming in behind her. Taking care not to crush or stab them by accident, she curled up into a loose ball and drifted off into sleep. Her two sons and four daughters joined their mother, resting against her side. By the time they matured and reached independence at seven months of age, two more of the chicks would've fallen victim to predators. But for now at least, they'd all successfully survived another day of life on Skull Island. And that was a major reward in itself.

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This part of Kong's kingdom might be covered now in regards to its denizens, but there's even more to explore, believe me. Right now though, I can't decideifmy next chapters will be about the creatures of the lowlands, or the creatures of the swamps. In addition, I'm starting a whole new semester of college tomorrow, so whatever I choose probably won't find its way here any time soon. But the time and the idea will come to me sooner or later. 


	4. Chapter 4:Piranhadon

Well, I'm back! I've decided to focus on the creatures of the rivers and swamps for my next few chapters this time, and if all goes well, I should be getting a chapter up once a week now. The creature I'll be using to kick off this latest section is one that was actually _supposed _to be in the final cut of the movie, and can even be seen in the trailers, with a scene filmed for it and everything. But did we get to see Mrs. Piranhadon take a Tommy gun blast to the face from Jack Black in the theaters? NNOOOO... What a gyp, in my opinion. So the fearsome fish is naturally the most deserving of being at the head of the pack here in this fifth chapter. Enjoy yourselves.

**Reviews: To **Blue Autumm Sky: I am not worthy! I am not worthy of being honored so by the queen of Kong fanfics! Now that I have that out of my system... I'm very glad you enjoy it so much. As a general rule, if you see an animal in my story with a capitalized name, it either comes from the book or I made it up myself. As for the Palustroodon, no, there's nothing like them in the movie-totally my own creation. Also, I put Capt. Englehorn as shooting the first specimen during the _fourth _expedition to the island. But anyway, it pleases me that you think highly of this.

**Tallacus: **Thanks for your dedicated readership! It'll take a bit to get to the Venatosaurs, but trust me, when you do see that chapter here, it will totally be worth the wait.

And for all readers: In chapter three, I described Palustroodon as camo-patterned and left it at that. To be more accurate, I thought of them as brown-dark green-and black. Think the face paint on navy SEALS. Thought you'd like to know!

* * *

Chapter Five.

In the mile-long stretch of river and flooded swamp where she generally patrolled, the old female Piranhadon was far and away its most fearsome aquatic killer. At 46 feet long and weighing four tons, she was as long as a gray whale and heavy as a large African elephant cow. Both gray whales and elephants however, are gentle creatures that harm no one and only ask to be left alone. With her pale gray-blue eyes, double hinged jaws, and a mouth full of teeth like great crystal daggers though, it went without saying that the Piranhadon was far less benign in nature.

Even her form was alien and frightening, looking something like if you took a gigantic eel, gave it six additional gill slits beside the one it already had, switched its pectoral fins with the flippers and chest of a sea lion or frogfish, and finally replaced the creature's head with that of a deep-sea fish like a fangtooth, throwing in a thick sensory barbells attached to each hinge of the jaw for good measure. With scales colored a general forest green above and buff-brown below, she was also well camouflaged to stalk and lie in wait for her intended prey. Taken all together, it was little wonder then, that playwright Jack Driscoll "The Hero of Skull Island," would later write in a poetic moment of this fish, "A yawning Piranhadon is dreadful. A basking one is a murder put on hold. But one of these demon fish attacking is a sight so horrific as to make the blood of any creature run cold."

Even the most terrible predators have their passive moments however, and as the sun started to very weakly filter through the emerald green water, one of Skull Island's fiercest fish was sleeping in a deep channel the river had carved out between two sandbars, facing upstream and into the current so that lots of oxygen passed through her gills. Although she had no eyelids to open, there was a brief, but still noticeable change in the fish's pale eyes as she woke up to start yet another day of patrolling the river.

Pushing herself up off the bottom with her pectoral fins, she started swimming upstream near the right bank, her body moving like an eel's as she silently slipped through the water. A Malaysian box turtle hunkered down on the bottom as she approached, and a terrified school of tiger barbs parted before her in a rush of orange and black. Fortunately for them however, although the Piranhadon was aware of their presence, she found them too small by far to even bother attacking. Besides, her mouth was one that had evolved to open upward, making it somewhat difficult, but not impossible, to catch prey underwater. Instead, she primarily hunted land animals that came to drink or were crossing the river.

It had been about half a week since she'd had a big meal, so today she was very hungry indeed, and hoping to get her jaws on a big quarry, something weighing at least a ton. Even more importantly, she was now pregnant, eating not for two but eleven. Like condors or rattlesnakes, Piranhadon only bred every other year. Last year had been the huge older female's year off, with none of the hassle of mating and carrying around developing babies.

But this year, three months ago during the dry season when the Piranhadon bred, one day a group of 12 to 20-foot males had amorously chased after her for hours, hoping to catch up to and mate with her. She'd doggedly kept up her efforts to leave them in the dust, but the two fastest males had managed to chase her down, appeasing her somewhat by wrapping their pectoral fins around her belly, and then using their modified anal fin to fertilize her eggs internally. In two months more time, she'd give birth to ten 5-foot long young in a sheltered, still backwater, leaving them to fend for themselves. Right now though, she had to make a big kill about every three days if everyone was to receive proper nutrition.

But before she actually started hunting, there was something she had to do in the cool humidity of the morning. As the sun grew higher, she swam over to a muddy beach, and turned to face it at a forty-five degree angle. Opening her fanged mouth again and again, she pumped water over her gills, getting as much oxygen in her as possible. Then, she lunged right for the muddy shore, charging through the water at a deceptive and terrifying speed, as a school of frantic Sun-fins, deep-bodied fish the size of your palm with dusky-black backs and pale white bellies, used their big black-mottled straw yellow fins to launch themselves right into the misty air.

Totally ignoring them, the Piranhadon deliberately slid out onto the mud beach, exposing three-quarters of her green-brown body. She wasn't chasing prey, or trying to commit suicide, or trying to get a better look above the water's surface. Instead, this bizarre behavior was for her health. A huge predator she may've been, but the old fish was also a huge target for parasites.

She was plagued by revolting little things like the 4-inch crab _Cutiscidis_, which attached itself to the skin and ate the host's living flesh until its back was countersunk with the skin, even then continuing to eat. Then there was _Profanus_, a free-swimming tapeworm fifteen inches long that rasped away skin and flesh to eat, later laying its eggs in the wound to do the same until they became independent. There was the worm _Estrivermis_, a 20-inch vampire that drank blood from a fish's veins and never let go. Leeches sucked blood from thin-skinned areas like the mouth tissues and inner flippers, while there was even a sort of aquatic tick that drank blood from between the scales.

Needless to say, all these parasites were real threats to the Piranhadon's condition at worst, and drove her to distraction sometimes at best. Fortunately, she had some feathered friends on land to help her out. Lying on the mud, she vibrated muscles around her swim bladder to give a mild grunting call. Used only very rarely for purposes of appeasement or submission, it basically meant "Everything's cool. Don't worry, I won't bite or threaten you."

There was a flapping of wings, and a huge gray heron landed near her, very carefully walking over to her right flank. There was a spark of pain, and the Piranhadon knew in her nebulous way that one more parasite was gone. As the gray heron slowly kept about his work, four snow-white great egrets came over, using their yellow bills to pluck off further vermin. The huge fish stayed still as she could. A Brahminy kite arrived next, regarding the matter with her intense black eyes. A handsome bird of prey with a white head, neck, and breast with the rest of the body a bright chestnut, she lightly perched on the killer fish's back, plucking off even more parasites in her hooked ivory beak. A Malaysian giant turtle, with a shell as big as a laundry hamper, came out of the water to get in on the easy meal, while a half-grown water monitor and some 2-foot Peter's mud agamids, which were lizards endemic to the island, came in from land to assist. All together, both reptiles and birds plucked parasites from and out of the Piranhadon's scaly skin,

Unfortunately, she could only safely stay out of the water for four minutes at a time. Any more was dangerous. So the fish demonstrated another neat trick. Raising herself up on her flippers, she thrashed her body at the same time, dispersing her avian and reptilian cleaners. It wasn't graceful, but it got the old predator back into the water, where she gratefully rested for a few moments, letting the current force oxygen into her system. Then, energy restored, she shot back up onto the muddy beach again. She hadn't had half as many parasites removed so far as she wanted.

For the next hour or so, the Piranhadon allowed herself to be groomed and freed of as many of her wretched freeloaders as possible, alternating between the water and the mud, sometimes rolling over on her side to give the cleaner critters easier access. She even opened her daggered mouth, and in a gesture of either total trust or utter stupidity, the birds would pluck leeches and other creatures right out of those not-so-gently smiling jaws. Skull Island egrets, white-eyed ducks, white-breasted waterhens, and a black marsh turtle all joined in too, unknowingly doing their bit to make her life more comfortable. They even reached down into the wounds the parasites had caused, removing every last bit and sometimes plucking out inflamed tissue. That really hurt, but the Piranhadon was used to pain, and endured it. Compared to what discomfort the parasites caused, it was nothing.

Finally, she decided she'd had plenty of her parasite cure administered, and clumsily thrashed back into the river for the last time. This was also the time of day when the only two creatures she feared, V. Rex and Venatosaurus, became active, and she didn't be want to be caught defenseless on the shore.

Most of all, it was time to go about her day's work. It was time to go hunting. Although she was much longer then she was thick, and could use her pectoral fins to crawl through shallow water if need be, the Piranhadon still needed at least seven feet of water to lay an ambush for prey. At the same time, the land animals generally chose to drink and cross a river where the water was rather shallow, which further complicated matters. But after living in this waterway for forty years, with at least another decade ahead of her, this wise old lady knew a thing or two about which were the best hunting spots to use.

Ignoring the danios, barbs, rasboras, and other small fish that fled from her, the Piranhadon decided to go to the mouth of a nearby deep creek. To her delight, she found a 30-strong herd of Malamagnus there, some grazing on bushes and flowers on shore, while others ate the water lilies, water lettuce, marsh grass, and aquatic plants growing in the river shallows.

Gray-brown in color, the herbivorous Malamagnus were basically like the hippos or capybaras of Skull Island, able to swim at the surface or walk along the bottom. Up to 20 feet long, these huge tusked reptiles weighed as much as walruses and were used to checking for threats from the land, not the water, making them an excellent meal for the Piranhadon.

Going right to the bottom of the sandy channel, she crawled forward on her fins, being as stealthy as possible. The closest targets were a group of five animals, and the Piranhadon slithered up over the edge of the drop-off, making sure to keep slow, breathe calmly, and especially not make any ripples. This performance would've done even a crocodile proud. Soon, she would strike.

All of a sudden, as she put one pectoral fin down to move forward, the Piranhadon caused a small swirl of water to form. It also disturbed the algae and duckweed a little, revealing some of her scaly body. One member of the Malamagnus quintet she'd been stalking saw and heard the disturbance right away, and with deep coughing roars of alarm, they and the rest of the herd immediately broke into a surging gallop, quickly fleeing to dry land or the very edge of the water where they were safe.

One young adult male however, didn't see or recognize what the cause for concern was, and continued cropping water plants in the deeper water. So the Piranhadon went after him, swimming in the big reptile's direction, only ready to attack when she got within ten feet. The rest of the herd, seeing their comrade still at risk, gave bellow after bellow of warning, hoping he'd figure things out and escape in time.

Finally, the subadult male made the wise decision, turning and running like mad through the shallows. At that instant, the Piranhadon arrived in a boil of surging water, muscle, and teeth, leaping out at the prey that she was sure was hers. It wasn't to be though, and her strike just missed his thick tail.

Frustrated, she clapped her jaws once, and then turned in a U, slipping back into the channel and then the main river. It was midmorning now, a time when many of the land animals were moving around, and the elderly fish decided to lie in wait at a place where a game trail spanned the river, forcing animals to cross. So, dispersing the small fry as usual, she headed in that direction.

All the while, she kept her senses sharp for aquatic prey that was worth taking along the way. She came across a school of several Stinkfish, 3-foot barbs with hunched backs, thick dark gray and thinner off-white bands, and weighing about 20 pounds each. With wrinkled, sagging tissue at their chin and throat and under their eyes, rheumy little gray-blue eyes, a fat hooked block nose like a sperm whale's, and four thin dangling barbells, they looked very much like sad, very old men. They were slow swimmers, and large, so the fish could in theory make a nice snack.

If pressured though, they would shoot out horrible tasting, fogging chemicals along with fecal material out of their anus, leaving a potential predator both empty-jawed and with a very bad taste in its mouth indeed. The Piranhadon hadn't made the mistake of trying to eat a Stinkfish in fifteen years, and she never would again. So of course, she let them go on their way.

Then, as she swam along, she came across a school of fish called Naomi's nutcrackers. Big, deep-bodied creatures, they were orange-brown in color, with a distinct carmine tint to their chest and belly. Their name came from the fact that like the pacu of South America, they used their strong jaw muscles and crushing teeth to grind up nuts and fruits that fell into the water, as well as for eating water plants. At 3 feet long, they presented an excellent, if not totally filling, snack for the Piranhadon, who promptly attacked them. Weaving and lunging at the school from near the bottom, she managed to catch five of the large fish before they evaded her, impaling them on her crystal teeth and swallowing her catch as blood puffed out.

Sparing the rest of the nutcracker fish, she continued on her way towards the crossing site, where she hoped that something above the one-ton mark would show up there. But she was interrupted again, this time by the scent of fresh blood. That could only mean one thing, namely that some creature had just made a fresh kill nearby, and it got all her senses tingling in anticipation. Although the Piranhadon got most of her meat by going and hunting it herself, she wasn't above using her fangs and size to swipe another predator's meal if the chance presented itself and the catch was big enough. Sometimes she'd even devour the smaller predator itself for good measure.

With her excellent sense of smell, she easily followed the blood trail to its source, and it _was _from an animal killed by a predator-but it turned out to be a disappointment. The successful river predator proved to be a young Hydruscimex, a 12-foot aquatic relative of centipedes-although this one was "merely" 7 feet in length-, and he'd just caught himself a large duck, killing the bird with a fiercely venomous bite. Now he tore at his poultry meal with the sharp, hooked teeth ringing his mouth, as other fish darted in to grab tiny scraps.

The duck was much too small for a Piranhadon's meal however, and she left him in peace. Nor was attacking the Hydruscimex a smart option either, for he could inject copious amounts of venom in a bite, causing extreme, debilitating pain to large animals, and death to smaller ones. So she carried on, wisely choosing not to make an unnecessary enemy of a creature who was just minding his own affairs.

Scent and memory guided her finally to the familiar river crossing, where she then laid her huge body down on the algae and sand, throwing her two big barbells in front of her to catch any hint of vibration or splashing. As if they even knew somehow that stillness was critical, even her unborn young stopped their periodic bursts of thrashing, although it was more likely just a rest time in the womb.

So the leviathan laid there in eight feet of river water, thinking her slow, patient, repetitive Piranhadon-thoughts. _Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait_. She might not have been very bright, but she was a regular savant in that department at least. All around her, other denizens of the river, smaller fish, turtles, crayfish, and insects respectfully passed by. Twelve feet off her left shoulder, a gorgeous stork-billed kingfisher, all royal blue above and orange below, plunged into the water, grabbing a member of a school of Purple-striped rasboras, Skull Island natives with greenish-mocha backs and upper flanks and dull silver bellies, a brilliant, almost fluorescent purple line separating the two parts that ran from the snout, just over the eye, and to the tail.

A pair of Bloodfish, ten inches long with beautiful red-orange coloration and bellies tinged with lavender passed by, rooting out worms and cracking small snails in their flattened teeth. A female Skull Island snapping turtle passed overhead, pursued by an eager male as she fled towards a shallow marsh. Coming down the river came a school of feeding Prickle fish, eight-inch long and silver gray, using their funny tubular snouts to suck up little shrimp and other river plankton, cocking their spiny fins at every disturbance and twitching their bulging amber eyes.

Ten minutes into her state of universe-filling vigilance, the old Piranhadon was joined by another member of her kind, a younger female about 25 feet in length. Although they did have home ranges, Piranhadon usually weren't all that territorial, and were willing to tolerate each other in an uneasy truce if the occasion required it. Raising herself off the bottom in a swirl of sand, the old female perched on her pectoral fins, extending her dorsal and half-opening her mouth in a mild threat. Getting the message, the younger newcomer swam off to the left, sinking to the bottom a dozen yards away and adopting the same posture as her senior. Together, dull fish minds dead to nothing but what their barbells told them, they waited with a soulless patience.

Forty minutes later, the old female's barbells detected vibrations, ever so faint, coming from the left bank. A herd of land animals, medium-sized, were going to cross the river. Coming through the jungle and onto the shore was a herd of Pugiodorsus, nine-foot descendants of plant-eating dinosaurs like Dryosaurus and Hypsilophodon. Gray-black in color with some dirty-yellow stripes, they had scattered scutes of bone on their backs, with the whole effect making them look amazingly like two-legged, dog-sized, mutant baby alligators.

One very distinct feature all their own though, was the pair of sharp spikes on their shoulders, curved in a way that made it look like a pair of cow horns had somehow been grafted onto their backs. These spikes helped give the Pugiodorsus a fair degree of protection from predators attacking from behind or above. Even more importantly, they were almost as fast and nimble as deer when running, able to leap over logs and cross broken terrain while going at full tilt. All in all, the fleet herbivores were a good match for any attacking predator as long as they stayed on land. None of these defenses were any good in the water though. And they knew it.

For a couple minutes, the twenty-strong Pugidorsus herd looked at the 100-foot stretch of river before them, milling around nervously. They weren't fools about the dangers that lurked in the tea-colored depths, and no one wanted to be first. But they had to get to the tasty plants on the other side somehow, and finally the herd's lead female took the plunge. Instantly, the others followed.

Lying on the bottom, the Piranhadon couldn't see what was happening of course. And her eyesight was so dim anyway that she could only see shades of black, white, and gray, tinged with faint color during the day. But she felt the vibrations from shore and the impact of each dinosaur's plunge into the water. Waiting until the first herd members were out of their depth, she lunged forward with the speed of a striking snake, her nightmare visage gaping for the kill.

But faster even than she, the younger female got to the prey first, dragging down a bleating male in a welter of bubbles, water and blood as he was punctured by her crystal teeth. Even though there were plenty of other Pugidorsus in the water now, the older female wouldn't stand for that, and promptly stole the younger female's kill, unceremoniously taking it right out of her jaws. Although shocked, the smaller Piranhadon made little protest. The larger female after all, was bigger, meaner, stronger, and a more experienced fighter, dominant in every way. But being practical, she just rushed back in and took another unfortunate Pugidorsus from the surface with a snap of those bear-trap jaws, moving farther away this time after killing it to eat.

Meanwhile, the elderly female was just finishing gulping down her stolen meal, and this time went for another victim herself, breaching the surface to impale the bleating dinosaur on her fangs, then folding the reptile double as she swallowed in two spastic gulps. Her smaller dining companion's jaws closed on the flank of another at that second, as her elder turned in a tight U and rolled onto her side, grabbing another Pugidorsus by the legs and repositioning the creature, stabbing it mercilessly with her fangs before bolting it headfirst.

Swimming like mad, most of the terrified Pugiodorsus herd had now managed to get close to the other side of the river as the two great predator fish went about their grim business. Charging through the water, the younger female attacked them again, biting into one's belly and shoving her forward. This time, at 25-feet long, the younger fish decided three Pugidorsus were enough for a full meal, and swam away with her last kill, repositioning the bleeding reptile and gulping it down as she swam off.

Pregnant and much larger, the old female wasn't anywhere close to being full herself yet though, and remorselessly attacked the stragglers, leaping out of the water on her side to grab a male that had just touched bottom in the shallows by the hindquarters. By the time she'd pulled her latest catch back into the deeper water and consumed him, all the other members of the herd had made it to safety.

As a swarm of Killer-eels, aggressive, pack-hunting relatives of lampreys cleaned up the scraps, the Piranhadon cast around with her barbells for any more swimming prey. But there were no more targets, nothing left to kill, and she settled down. In fact, except for the Killer-eels, there wasn't _anything _living that had dared to stay in the immediate area-extremely sensible actions to take when what had once been a peaceful stretch of river had now become a literal killing field.

But amazingly, the Piranhadon was still hungry; still without that magic one-ton at a minimum catch. She'd eaten maybe four hundred and fifty pounds of struggling flesh since waking up, but it'd gone only partway towards assuaging her great hunger. No land animals would be having anything to do with this crossing for a while after a scene of carnage like that, so the colossal fish left the place, heading a little ways upstream and then turning right to go up a smaller tributary river.

Her destination was a place on the left bank where a flat, sandy shore came out of the jungle nearby, with a decent drop-off being quite close. The smaller river also had a slower speed to it, meaning that water lilies, floating ferns, and duckweed were abundant, providing good cover to ambush prey from. Most crucial of all for the Piranhadon, she knew from experience that this was a favored drinking spot for many of the local land animals-including big dinosaurs.

Slithering along the edge of the drop-off, she flushed a quartet of Dirt turtles, brownish reptiles about the size and shape of diamondback terrapins, that had been feeding on a freshly excreted heap of Malamagnus dung and the snails attracted to it. The two rogue bulls 'behind' the manure pile were now resting on a spit of sand and basking in the hot noonday sun-which was just as well for them. Ignoring the fleeing turtles, the Piranhadon laid down to face the bank at a place where it had a steep, yet gradual slope. She flung her thick barbells out at right angles to her savage countenance, resting them in the sand to better detect the footsteps of prospective prey, and laid her pectoral fins against her sides, ready to explode forward with her powerful tail. Here, the water lilies and dark water provided nice camouflage, even with the sun almost right overhead. The Piranhadon was now a terrible death machine, just waiting for some poor, oblivious visitor to switch her on. She relaxed, and as she'd done so, so often during her life, she patiently waited.

The midday sun was hot, and although it felt great on the huge fish's skin, many land animals were now feeling the heat. Thirty-seven minutes into her waiting, the Piranhadon felt footsteps-big ones. They were really big ones in fact, belonging to a herd of Brontosaurus. Although they were definitely BIG prey to make an understatement, they were too large for even the monster fish. She could probably kill one by biting into its neck and shredding it, but there was no way she could eat the carcass. Even the calves were too big for her to take. One Brontosaurus calf, wedged between his mother and another adult, even waded out into the water as far as the edge of the drop-off. But the Piranhadon just gently slid on her belly backwards into the deeper water, ever-so-slowly backing water with her tail. The Brontosaurus herd drank and socialized for about fifteen minutes, unaware of the pregnant titan just yards away. Then, the dominant bull gave a "Let's go" woofer-type call, turning and leading his obedient herd back into the forest.

Calm filtered back onto the riverbank. Relaxing again, the Piranhadon reclaimed her former position against the edge off the drop-off, waiting with the dedicated hunter's patience. About three-quarters of an hour later, she sensed another series of footfalls, faint at first but becoming ever stronger, through her barbells, and the huntress almost quivered with excitement. A mixed herd of Ligocristus, Skull Island's duckbilled dinosaur, and Ferrucutus, large horned dinosaurs, was coming. The single-minded hunt, the waiting game, was almost over.

The key word here though, was almost. The Ligocristus and Ferrucutus were both nervous, although the greater part of it admittedly belonged to the defenseless duckbills. They too, knew what could burst out of the water at them, and approached the shore very cautiously indeed. Even without Piranhadon lurking, drinking was always a dangerous time, when predators like V. Rex could catch them off guard. The two species of dinosaurs finally came down to the water, legs braced for flight as they sucked and gulped and swallowed in both relief and paranoia.

Under the surface, the Piranhadon could see the dim shapes of the dinosaurs now against the sun, and feel them sucking the water. All she had to do was make a choice. Locking onto a target, she slammed her pectoral fins against her flank, gathered herself for the leap, and with an explosive crash of her strong tail, was suddenly among them.

A satanic greenish face came rocketing out of the still water, its center a cavernous black mouth ringed by teeth like huge sharpened icicles that closed on a Ferrucutus cow's neck and shoulders, wrenching the shocked dinosaur off her feet and into the shallow water. The horned dinosaur fought hard for her life, shaking her head, bucking, and tugging backward with all her might. But the bottom was slippery, her attacker was stronger, with jaws like a steel trap and powerful as a pit bull's, she was already losing blood, and the Ferrucutus weighed a ton-and-a-half while the Piranhadon was at least twice that heavy. And because she'd been grabbed by the neck, neither could the dinosaur stab the great fish with her horns. There could only be one outcome.

As the other dinosaurs scattered in all directions and the two Malamagnus bulls headed for cover, the straining Piranhadon, every tendon and muscle taut, dragged her thrashing catch into the deeper water of the river, where she held the forequarters of the beast below the surface as she viciously bit deep several times. Water filling those huge lungs and massive loss of blood did the rest. All that was left of the Ferrucutus cow's resistance was the final surrender.

Feeling her prey finally go limp, the Piranhadon let go and grabbed her kill by the chin, repositioning it so that the dinosaur's frill was laying flat against the shoulders, making it easier to swallow. Opening her double-jointed jaws impossibly wide, the old female drew the dinosaur into her mouth step by step, the short horns offering little discomfort. Although she couldn't shred or rip off big chunks like a true piranha, she would twist her feast a bit or just stab it with her fangs again and again to crush and lacerate the meat, making it easier to get down. She'd even use her powerful jaws to crack some of the bones if need be, especially the ribs and forelegs. All the while, Killer-eels and Driscoll's shingled catfish, 2-foot long dirty yellow catfish with bony plates of armor, brown speckling and long teeth like razors, attracted by the huge amounts of blood, brazenly fluttered and darted around right in front of her great fanged maw, stealing their own pound of flesh for the day.

Finally, with her belly bulging like that of a python that's swallowed a goat, the Piranhadon, after a good deal of gnashing teeth, shaking, and scraping on the bottom, managed to sever the tail of the Ferrucutus. She tried to eat the thick tail, but couldn't get it down, no matter how much she tried. Too full to eat another thing, she reluctantly left it to the catfish, Killer-eels, and a lucky bull shark that had swum up the river from the sea.

Literally stuffed to the gills, the old female Piranhadon went to the surface and let the sun shine down on her, absorbing both the heat of the light and the warmth the water was soaking up. Her vision was actually rather good out of the water, and for a few seconds, she saw the dim dark forms of a small herd of Ferrucutus standing on the bright sand before turning and leaving. Almost all the time, every member of a herd would head for the hills whenever the fish attacked, or at least move several hundred yards away before resuming drinking, like what the main herd was doing now. In her bloated, half-asleep state, it did briefly cross the Piranhadon's 12-volt mind that it was curious how these Ferrucutus had still been standing and choosing to remain at the site where she'd just taken one of their comrades, but she dismissed it as she slowly swum downriver.

She couldn't have possibly known the reason, and wouldn't have cared if she did somehow know, but she'd grabbed and killed the lead bull's favorite cow, who he "liked" the best. Their bond had kept him on the bank for that time as he bellowed and groaned forlornly, refusing to leave as long as there was even a chance she might pop up and come back. But his mate was now beyond help. And hope.

Meanwhile, the stuffed Piranhadon sculled downstream, her body just below the surface as she soaked up the sun. This kill was even bigger than her last, a male Ligocristus snatched from a herd of bachelor bulls, and would take her four, maybe five, days to fully digest. All around her, other creatures of the river were relaxing too, turtles sunning on logs and sandbars, a hulking Needlemouth rolling on her side, lizards standing primly in the mud or on branches, and cormorants perched spread-eagled, drying out their wings.

The huge fish felt calm, and decided to go into a flooded stretch of forest nearby to bask and rest. As she started to enter the flooded maze of trees, weaving her way through with an easy grace, she came across a pair of Turturcassis, 13-foot reptiles that almost resembled plesiosaurs and preyed on fish and turtles, in the act of courting, the larger, tawny-colored male curling and rubbing around the dark blond female in something very close to poetry in motion.

A few hours before, the Piranhadon would've happy to cut the dance short by attacking and eating one of the participants. Now though, she just watched with casual disinterest as the Turturcassis pair, caught up in their sleek dance, came closer. Just twenty feet away, both reptiles suddenly saw the huge fish hanging in the water and much too close. In a burst of speed, the two lovers separated and fled for their lives in opposite directions. Out of instinct, the stuffed old fish halfheartedly chased the male for several seconds, but let him escape by a wide margin.

Moving on, she found a wide channel between the inundated trees where a mid-sized creek flowed during the dry season. Facing upstream to get plenty of oxygen, the scaly old-timer contently exposed her dark back to the air and rested, lolling in nine feet of warm water like a gigantic log as the sun beat down and feeling the sensation of Ferrucutus meat starting to digest in her belly, much of it going to her waiting litter, who calmed down one by one as long-awaited nourishment reached them.

The huge fish stayed like this for three hours, as other water denizens respectfully kept clear. But she was no threat to anyone now, and even if creatures big enough to make a good meal came by, they were spared. A Sepulcro, a five-foot long, chocolate brown elongated fish with a huge mouth for grabbing fish came into view, digging into the leaves and mud with his tail until only his back and face were exposed. When a big school of banded barbs passed by six minutes later, bearing horizontal stripes of pale gold and faded brown, he shot out with his giant mouth agape, swallowing two dozen of the four-inch fish. The sunning Piranhadon just dimly watched.

When she became too hot, the huge predator fish wove her way into the shade of the trees at her right, resting in the cool darkness of a dead giant that'd only fallen halfway before being caught by the crown of another one. Soon, the whole of the flooded river became darker as storm clouds rolled in during the mid-afternoon, and then the Piranhadon's barbells detected a pattern of repeated, little impacts that she'd long ago learned to associate with this type of darkness as rain suddenly poured down from the clouds, and the voices of the river and the raindrops both merged together in a sublimely beautiful and deeply sacred kind of music. In the warm water, she just hung still and got zoned out to the rhythmic, irrelevant vibrations coming from the surface while resting and digesting.

Finally, seemingly as fast as it had come, the rainstorm moved away, with the sun coming back out. Rising back to the surface, the Piranhadon slowly moved back to the river from the swamped forest, where she again sought shade, hanging just below the surface near the bank, staying in one spot with movements of her fins. Eventually, the sun became lower in the sky, and the shadows ever longer. The sun became weaker in the water first of course, and the old fish's blank grayish eyes sensed it. Going to a sandbar in the middle of the river, she lightly tucked herself against it and presented her flank to the west, enjoying the last of the sun's rays on her cold-blooded body.

When the sun finally started to touch the horizon, going down with swift speed, the great fish sensed it and left the sandbar to find a place to sleep for the night. If she'd still been unsuccessful in hunting, she would've used this time of day as a perfect chance to stalk and surprise prey in the dusk, and her kind could even do an okay job of hunting by night if need be. But with two tons of meat stewing inside her belly after this day, there was obviously no need.

Looking for a good site to retire, the pregnant Piranhadon found a decrepit sort of small rock pyramid about eight feet high with carvings and a sort of hollow, maybe a shrine to some river or water god that Skull Island's former civilization had constructed, and had then later been submerged in 16 feet of water by some course change. The stable structure had also blocked the passage of sunken logs and some sand, creating a whole latticework of dead timber facing the current. Yes, it was a nice, secure place to sleep out of the current. So, gently resting her belly so stuffed with meat and unborn young on the bottom, the Piranhadon took up her position behind the pyramid, automatically flicking her fins and huge tail to stay in place as the last sunlight disappeared.

Something suddenly changed in her eyes, and the huge beast then fell asleep. An adept, successful, and wise hunter, she would continue to provide her developing babies with the nutrition they needed to grow over the next two months, making many more kills along the way. Then, the day would come when she'd go into a deep marsh, arch her tail up as she swam-and a few hours later, all her responsibilities to the next generation of Piranhadon would thankfully be over.

That was far in the future still, and as the hulking predator dozed, as they always did and always would, the fish, turtles, and invertebrates in the area instinctively kept away from the sleeping giantess. As far as they were concerned, when she woke up, she might well be hungry again.

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Well, that takes care of this chapter, but I promise that there'll be even more surprises in store as we explore Skull Island's rivers and wetlands together. Of course, whether every visitor will be returning alive is another matter entirely... 


	5. Chapter 5:Turturcassis

What's coming through the swamp over there?... Would you look at that! Another chapter done. Just for the record, this is the halfway mark for the Skull Island ecosystem I'm currently covering. Also, I need to come out and say that this chapter does have some "scenes" of predator action that might be a bit strong for some readers. Although it's totally natural, I may well even increase the story's rating a notch because of this one. This chapter took quite a bit of time to complete, but I know at least it won't be found lacking to my faithful readers. :) As always, enjoy.

This chapter has been revised slightly.

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As night's blackness started to merge to gray, the still Skull Island dawn began to throb with the calls of sunbirds, tailorbirds, finches, Carrion parrots, kingfishers, drongos, and a host of other feathered creatures, all proclaiming to the world both ownership of their territory and the start of a new day. The dawn chorus also involuntarily served as a wakeup call for many other creatures, whether they liked it or not. 

One of these was a _Turturcassis_, an 11-foot hunter of the rivers that looked a good deal like a cross between a monitor lizard and a plesiosaur. Sleeping on a grassy sandbar for protection against nocturnal predators, he opened his brown, cat-like eyes and raised his tubular head, groggily gazing without appreciation at the view being slowly inundated with light.

Feeling like sleeping for a bit longer, he lowered his head again and closed his eyes, trying his best to doze off. But it was just no use with all the raucous birdcalls penetrating the air, and he resigned himself to wakefulness, opening his elongated jaws to reveal teeth that were shaped like leopard claws and just as sharp.

Besides, this was the perfect time for mosquitoes to be active, and they were also doing their part to keep the big reptile awake with their loud buzzing and painful biting. The normal-sized kinds like tiger mosquitoes he could handle. It was the giant species like the crimson _Spinaculex_, or the ebony Black's giant mosquito, sparrow-sized insects only found on the island that were the worst, and naturally quite difficult to stand.

With no hope of getting more shut-eye, he decided to rid himself of both assaults by re-entering his true habitat, awkwardly rising onto his legs and turning to face the water. Several frogs leapt out of his way as the reptile briefly shambled through the thin grass like a beaver before reaching the water's edge and gracefully sliding in, ready to go hunting.

Like so many other aquatic creatures, although the Turturcassis was slow and clumsy on land, in his river domain he took on a dramatic new grace, tucking his legs against his sinuous body and swimming smoothly with his keeled tail. Feeling hungry, he decided to go hunting and catch himself some fish or even better a turtle or two for breakfast. Since he was adept at maintaining an almost constant body temperature, his body burnt energy fairly quickly as a result, meaning he needed to have a full meal every other day.

As he swam, his eyes pierced the still-dusky water, looking for suitable prey. There was a school of hunchbacked small fish called Firesides that looked like dwarfed sturgeon, colored scarlet on the back and upper flanks with a white belly before him, but they were too small and swift to bother with. The next group of fish the reptile encountered was a school of tiger barbs being attacked and harassed by a pair of Rapanatrix, eel-like fish with gorgeous tiger stripes of green and black and yellow, using their large eyes to focus on a target before chasing the barb down and grabbing it. Like the Firesides, the tiger barbs were too small and fast to make a meal, but the 22-inch long Rapanatrix were.

The Turturcassis rushed forward with mouth open, intending to grab one of the green-and-yellow fish in his jaws. But his prospective catch proved to be quicker, rolling out of the way, twisting downward, and successfully making her escape. Not ready to give up, the big reptile pursued for a couple yards, but let the fish go to seek other prey.

Continuing on, he rose to the surface to take a breath, then submerged again in one fluid motion. While diving, he suddenly caught sight of some clown loaches returning back to the cover of some large cracks in the riverbed after a night of foraging. At a foot long, the whiskered black and orange fish would make great prey, and the Turturcassis dove at them from above, jaws open.

A clown loach desperately dived into a silt-lined crevice, with the reptile hard on that fish's tail. There was no escape today though, for the predator rammed his tubular head into the opening, grabbing the big loach and impaling him with those sharp hooked teeth.

Backing up, the Turturcassis turned his catch headfirst and swallowed it in two gulps, then shoved his head down another crevice, grabbing another trapped loach and eating it in turn. Although he was clearly an elegantly supple creature in the water, graceful as an otter and able to adopt any position, not to mention swim faster than any man, he wasn't really built for chasing down fast-swimming fish in open water. Instead, they needed to either be easy to chase down to begin with or trapped in some way, and that was where his long head and serpentine neck really came into their own.

Sparing the rest of the loaches, the Turturcassis rose back to the surface, taking another breath as he knifed through the water. The pair of clown loaches had taken a bit of the edge off his hunger, and when he dove again, he stayed near the left bank and the shallows, scanning for his main, and favorite prey. At heart, he was a specialist hunter, and had evolved to stalk turtles. There were other large fish swimming around now, tinfoil barbs, Bloodfish, the large minnows called sharks like bala sharks, Segnix, which looked so much like hunchbacked, purplish pinecones, Naomi's nutcrackers, kissing gouramis, and climbing perch.

Although he did stop to grab a kissing gourami or two, and couldn't resist the perfect chance to chase a school of tinfoil barbs into a small inlet where he caught one of the large trapped fish, the turtle hunter generally ignored his finned neighbors now and swam on. Early morning was a time when turtles usually left their sleeping shelters on the riverbed and headed to basking sites like fallen logs and sandbars, absorbing the heat they needed to become energized for the day.

Soon enough, his patrol paid off, and finding a black marsh turtle swimming towards the bank he shifted gears, easily chasing it down. The turtle did what came naturally, hiding all his vulnerable parts in his 10-inch long shell, but it was no use against a Turturcassis. Grabbing the turtle across the shell, he surfaced again, taking another breath as he swam into another shallow inlet. There, he briefly put the black marsh turtle down, cocking his rectangular head as he regarded his fellow reptile.

A turtle's shell is a wonderful and ancient piece of evolutionary work, one that has served them well since at least the Triassic. The shell is covered with hard skin and large scales, with no delicate tissues that can be damaged or hurt. Both the carapace and plastron are fused together at each side in a structure called the bridge, so thick and smooth an attacker can't gnaw off any thin parts with its teeth, or even gain a grip on the slippery shell.

Finally, a turtle's upper shell forms a perfect arch, one of the strongest basic designs in the world, allowing it to withstand incredible pressures and bear up against hard blows. The shell is reinforced even further by the turtle's ribs, which are completely fused to the inner shell and act like girders, making it even more durable.

So it isn't surprising that most predators encountering a turtle quickly find out that although the waddling reptiles might be easy to catch, attempting to make a meal out of one is an exercise in futility, and give up after some ineffective gnawing and poking. If they are to successfully get into a turtle's mobile panic room, an animal needs to have jaws that are either very strong or very mobile. Turturcassis had opted for the latter kind.

Opening his mouth, the predator shoved the tip of his bottom jaw-which could open as far as 80 degrees-into the right side of the hind opening of the marsh turtle's shell. Hooked teeth pierced a hind leg and the lower torso, dragging out live flesh to be swallowed. The turtle soon died from blood loss and the shock of being eaten alive as the Turturcassis ate, using his toothy lower jaw to scoop and hook out turtle tissue, eating flesh and guts and bone, scraping out as much as he could while his upper jaw held the victim in place. When his teeth couldn't get out any more, he used his tongue, covered with rough barbs like a cat's, to rasp the last morsels of turtle off the bone.

The meat tasted great. A meal of turtle always seemed to be much more pleasing to the taste buds and thrice as nourishing as an equal amount of fish would be. Five pounds of meat was hardly enough for an 11-foot reptile though, and the Turturcassis moved on, leaving the empty shell to the carrion whelks and crabs.

It was two hours past dawn now as the sun rose higher in the sky, and the Turturcassis contracted his pupils in response. Taking another breath, he dove again, deciding this time to check a shallow part of the river, which was basically a small marsh full of reeds that was ahead and to his right. As he entered the shallower water, he felt his back become exposed to the air and the reeds part as his sleek body wove among them. He saw and slid up to another turtle then, a Malayan snail-eating turtle attractively marked with ivory on the skin, crunching a snail in its thick jaws.

With a 6-inch long shell it was also small, but that wouldn't stop the lithe reptile from eating it. This time though, when the turtle swam away, he let it go. Thanks to their snail diet, Malayan snail-eating turtles had a taste to their flesh that the Turturcassis didn't really care for, and he'd only consider eating one if starving.

As he wove through the reeds, he raised his head to take another breath, submerged again-and found excellent prey indeed. To his delight, his eyes caught sight of a Skull Island snapping turtle, a cantankerous beast descended from tortoises that stalked fish and water birds in the weedy and reedy shallows. The snapper, a younger female, had been lying in weight for egrets and other wading birds when the Turturcassis had discovered her, and whirled around to face him, razor-sharp beak open in a crystal clear threat.

Most of the time, this show of weaponry discouraged predators. Even Venatosaurs treated Skull Island snappers with respect and caution, generally being wise enough to leave them alone. Those who didn't received a deep, nasty gash from that beak. Turturcassis was a different matter altogether.

Sliding up to the defensive turtle, the tawny reptile appraised the situation. He jabbed at the turtle several times, drawing back as the snapper parried with snaps of her own powerful beak. Suddenly the Turturcassis adopted a position above the turtle and slashed downward with his hooked teeth. The turtle responded in kind, but her jaws only closed on water as her own momentum carried her forward for a few instants. Using that momentum to his advantage, the larger predator struck again in an upside-down position and bit into her right hind leg.

He righted himself, jaws still firmly clamped onto the 10-pound turtle's leg, which was now upside down herself. Despite the desperate struggles, the backward curving teeth ensured that there would be no escape. Heading out of the reeds and just below the surface, the Turturcassis swam several dozen yards to a sand spit nearby, the water parting around his live trophy like it was some bizarre figurehead.

Climbing up onto the sand, he got down to his remorseless work, tearing off the leg he was holding and swallowing it first. Then he plunged in again, ripping out and at the tail and hips. As the turtle died, his amazingly flexible neck and bullet shaped head came into play once more. His scaly neck twisted like an eel's body and he repeatedly plunged his whole muzzle, then face, then entire head into the domed shell, bolting down turtle flesh with all the greedy, bloody finesse of a feeding vulture.

When it was finally over and the predator had rasped off as many remaining meat scraps with his tongue as was possible, flies were buzzing in a thick cloud, crawling over both his now crimson head and a gory, newly empty turtle shell. Many a human's stomach would've turned at the sight, but the Turturcassis felt good and content. He felt about halfway full now, needing only one or two more decent meals of living turtle to be satisfied.

He wouldn't get them lying on the pale sand still, and the blood would also attract dangerous land predators like Venatosaurus soon enough. So he shambled back to the water's edge, and there proceeded to rinse his now bloodstained face off, shaking it several times and even wiping it on the sand. Then he slipped back into the emerald water, cruising back into the middle of the river where he now swam in a methodical sort of yo-yo fashion, scanning the bottom for turtles feeding, then swimming at the surface for a bit to look for turtles which were basking, paying special attention to the banks and creek mouths.

There were other predators working the river too now during the midmorning. As the Turturcassis rose to take another breath and take a look around, a school of almost diamond-shaped Ghoulfish, rust-colored on the top half and colored like welded metal on the bottom, thought his rising toward them was an attack.

So they hightailed it upward and forward, their flight being violently interrupted several seconds later by a great _SPOOLSH_ as something covered with feathers smashed through the surface into the group. Instinctively backpedaling, the Turturcassis raised just the top of his head above the surface, relaxing as he saw only an osprey winging up from the river, twisting the Ghoulfish to face into the wind. A gray heron watched unimpressed.

Staying at the surface, he rounded a bend in the river, scanning with his dark eyes and smelling the air- and then saw a delightful sight. Perched on a fallen log on a small sandbar were three shapes like enormous pancakes. The lean reptile knew what those were. Asian soft-shell turtles, huge and wonderfully defenseless in shells that were more like leather shields. Submerging slowly, he stayed near the bottom, keeping track of where he was in relation to the basking log. Being careful not to give himself away, he patiently stalked the soft-shell trio, not making even a ripple or a dark spot where there shouldn't be one.

The turtle stalker covered the distance, getting closer and closer. Although the Turturcassis could certainly chase them down underwater, turtles were even easier to catch on land, and that's were he meant to take these three by surprise. Just fifteen feet away, the soft-shells finally noticed him when he had to take a breath, and vaulted off the log to scramble for the river a yard away. Taking a hard turn around the shorter left side, their attacker was among the three as they started to get up speed in the water and scatter.

The Asian soft-shells were much less impressively armed than Skull Island snappers, and picking out the largest turtle, a male with a shell almost two feet long, the Turturcassis swooped down and expertly bit off the animal's head.

Within seconds, the blood had attracted Killer-eels and Driscoll's shingled catfish, who ravenously tore at the bleeding neck stump while the tawny killer, seeking to hang onto what was rightfully his, quickly swam back to the little sandbar with his kill. As his head broke the surface, the mooching scavengers stopped, leaving completely when the turtle's body was put down on terra firma.

This time, the Turturcassis didn't have to use his teeth or rasping tongue to extract turtle guts and meat. His teeth could just cut through the rubbery shell of this species and he ingested everything. It wasn't going to be a solitary lunch on this occasion though, for a two-foot Carrion centipede, braving predators and the risk of drowning, swam the short distance from shore to tug off smaller pieces of turtle flesh and eat them. With its venomous fangs and painful bite, the Turturcassis knew better then to directly challenge the big bug, and resorted to merely growling as a way of giving voice to his possessiveness.

Halfway through his soft-shell meal, a Brahminy kite showed up as well, boldly swooping down and swiping loose shreds of meat or stray bones with meat attached. Sometimes the bird would even cheekily land on the sand and swiftly rip off a hunk from the kill, expertly avoiding the angry turtle-eater's jaws.

When the Turturcassis was done, almost full now, he turned around and just as before washed his face at the water's edge before plunging back in, leaving the kite and the centipede to suspiciously share what few scraps remained. He felt good, not in any big hurry now as he slid through the emerald water, schools of small fish dancing and parting before him.

Patrolling the right bank, he came across a herd of fifteen Malamagnus, and regarded them with interest as they grazed on waterweeds and lilies like reptilian moose. Some also were eating their way through an especially reed-choked pool where a small creek joined the river, opening it up again at the same time so other aquatic creatures could use it. Even with his somewhat unrefined powers of intellect and thought, the Turturcassis at least dimly sensed that the walrus-sized beasts sure seemed to have a more immediate effect on their surroundings than the rest of his animal neighbors.

At almost a ton, the giants were far too big for him to even consider attacking, and the only time he could ever expect to feast on Malamagnus flesh was if he got lucky and found a dead or dying one. For their part, the almost totally submerged herbivores watched him through their dull, blank eyes with only casual interest, knowing instinctively that he was no threat.

Instead, the Turturcassis had arrived to hunt for a strange sort of camp follower, one that happily ate the huge amounts of manure Malamagnus and other herbivores produced every day. Known as Dirt turtles, they were a simple gray-brown in color, with 6-7 inch shells, and one could always count on finding at least four or five of them in the company of Malamagnus.

And the Turturcassis didn't even have to bother with searching the Dirt turtles out among the herd, for a cow Malamagnus suddenly lifted her tail and did what big herbivores who take in a lot of fiber do, as fish rushed forward to feed on the manure. Even better for him, seven Dirt turtles suddenly rushed in from all directions. Their hunger made them blind to danger, and in one fluid motion, streaking between two cows and curving on his side as he whipped around a startled young bull, the predator was on the scene, grabbing a turtle as the spooked Malamagnus stampeded a couple dozen yards away.

Carrying his prey to a large flat rock, he decapitated the turtle and as before, plunged his muzzle in to remove what meat he could, then used his hooked teeth and raspy tongue to pull out the rest, bolting it like an alligator in satisfaction. He came back again after finishing, once more briefly stampeding the nervous Malamagnus as he shot for another Dirt turtle like an arrow, grabbing the shelled reptile as her brethren fled for a second time. Once again, the turtle also met a grisly and painful fate on the flat stone, with two shells left now for the carrion whelks and flies.

This time though, the Turturcassis didn't return for another turtle or decide to continue his tireless search for more upriver. After eating several dozen pounds of turtle, he was finally good and stuffed. Switching directions, he began to swim downstream in an even lazier manner then before, feeling the warm sun as he swam only two feet or so below the surface, scanning the bottom for anything noteworthy. When he breathed, raising only the top of his rectangular head above the surface, he saw barn and Pacific swallows swooping for insects in the air, and racket-tailed drongos, ash-gray birds related to starlings, sallying forth from their perches on the bank to hawk for larger insects, cracking them in their beaks.

While he was enjoying a pleasing sense of well-fed well-being now, he still never got complacent about the fact that there were other predators in this river system, and kept his sharp eyes open in case any predator big enough to kill even him was about. Hearing a fairly loud crunch below him, he cautiously dove, finding to his relief that the sound was just that of a Papilio, a bulky, elongated 5-foot fish with long teeth and wide, attractive-looking fins that looked almost like butterfly wings, crunching a large, seven inch-long Jack's red crayfish she'd ambushed from cover. Leaving the strangely beautiful fish to her meal, the Turturcassis rose to breathe and carried on.

Swimming near an undercut section of the bank, he then suddenly saw, lightly sleeping in the shade, three male Piranhadon. Turning tail, he wisely fled as fast as he could, but although they were aware of and interested in the reptile's sudden presence, the 14-to-19 foot fish had all eaten well recently and made no move to pursue.

After realizing that he wasn't being chased, the Turturcassis calmed down, and then decided to search for a place to bask in the sun. A big log was too thin, and a mudflat didn't feel right to him, but when he came across a partly sunken ruin that might have been a major shrine, he gracefully slid up onto the exposed, gently sloping roof.

Walking to a depression worn out in the center, he flopped on his stomach and stretched himself full length on the smooth granite, blissfully broiling in the tropical heat and kick-starting his metabolism. He wasn't just the only creature interested in using this ruin as a basking site, and a Malaysian box turtle carefully stuck its head out of the water, taking in the scene before going under again.

Then, astonishingly, his carapace broke the surface as the turtle crawled up onto the granite roof and parked himself a little ways from the Turturcassis. Equally amazing was the fact that although the Turturcassis saw and heard the turtle so near, he only looked at him and made no move to attack. Like all box turtles, the visitor was able to enclose every part of his body, preventing even a Turturcassis from eating this species, so maybe that was the reason he went unharmed.

But when a black marsh turtle warily climbed joined the pair of reptiles, she too wasn't attacked. Neither were another black marsh turtle and even a tasty behemoth of a Malaysian giant turtle when they came to bask with their natural enemy. By the time an hour had passed, there were nine turtles sharing the same fifteen square feet of rock with the Turturcassis in a bizarre and spooky truce as he sunned and rested in the golden light.

Like a man contemplating the dessert display after a good meal at a restaurant, the turtle killer couldn't resist looking at all the tasty turtles sharing his space and fantasizing about bolting their rich meat. But nor could he eat another thing. And in some vague, instinctive way, the turtles seemed to recognize the same state.

No one can say for sure how prey animals know that a predator is "off duty", and can even be closely approached. Maybe it's just the different look in its usually intense eyes, or the calm, nonchalant demeanor it's showing. Perhaps it's because the predator is choosing to blatantly expose itself instead of adopting a deadly serious posture and stalking. And maybe it's even picked up by a sense very close to ESP.

Whatever the case, the turtles sensed it strongly enough about the Turturcassis, and like wildebeest with lions, penguins with leopard seals, elk with wolves, and fur seals with sharks, knew he was currently harmless. Only if he shifted position or had to snap at a pestering giant mosquito was there any action on their part.

As he became hotter, the huge reptile panted, feeling the sensation of turtle meat stewing inside him. When the heat finally became too much for even him, he got up and shambled back into the river, accompanied by plops as he dispersed the turtles. Diving into the cool emerald depths and scattering a school of Morsel fish, 2-inch long silver fish with four or five mud brown saddles on their backs, he had a good drink, then decided to patrol his territory and refresh his scent posts, making sure all the while that there were no intruders.

Like other male Turturcassis, he had a strictly defined territory, each encompassing about three miles of river and wetlands, while solitary females passed through at will. Done with hunting, he ignored all the fish, neopedes, Malamagnus, and turtles he encountered, and with the sun so bright, most predators would either be resting or had no chance of ambushing him in the bright water.

Several hundred yards away from the sunken shrine, he turned left, and crawled onto the bank. He carefully smelled and listened for any danger first. Detecting none, he approached a small, low, 2-foot mound of thick mud and water plants. Then he did a strange thing, turning around, backing up to the mound and frantically wiggling his splayed reptile hips over it for several seconds before pulling away.

Two special glands at the base of the tail produced a sharp, almost cologne smelling waxy substance that he had just rubbed all over the scent mound. This delivered a strong KEEP OUT message to any other males considering entering his domain while sending an enticing invitation to females. And since it was the breeding season for the aquatic reptiles, it was especially important now that he maintained the mounds.

For about the next hour and a half, he kept at this important activity, going up onto the bank, warily looking around, then backing up onto yet another mound to rub his hips over it and so replenish his scent mark. If the scent mound itself was in less-than-perfect condition, the Turturcassis would go back into the shallows and use his lower jaw like a shovel to scoop up a big slab of mud, drop it on the site, and then use his chin and muzzle like a crude trowel to roughly shape it. After washing his mouth out, the new mound would usually be firm enough by then to scent mark.

As he worked his way towards the upstream edge of his territory, he naturally put even more work into making sure the message was understood, paying special attention to the mounds near the mouths of creeks and inflowing rivers where another male could invade or a female might be resting. So far he hadn't seen another member of his kind today. But as he arrived near the border of his territory, he saw an unwelcome sight.

It was an adolescent male on the bank, and even worse, he was eating one of _his _turtles! The Turturcassis wouldn't stand for that, and with a malevolent hiss, attacked the intruder. Looking up from his half-eaten turtle, the younger male fled into the water, where he crash-dived as the older animal pursued him, bubbles rising as he growled underwater.

Furious, the Turturcassis chased the other male for a good 50 yards until he was past the border of his territory, than let him go. Being a practical creature and a little bit hungry again now, he turned back to the forgotten small turtle, and finished off what the poaching adolescent had started. After waiting for a while to make sure that the other male wasn't coming back, he entered the river again and went downstream.

There were many creatures resting in the cool shade now, barbs, Bloodfish, Ghoulfish, gouramis, and neopedes among others as the Turturcassis passed by. The dark shapes of three great cormorants could be seen gliding through the water nearby as they chased and caught members of a school of half-grown bala sharks, while a Rapanatrix joined in. At the left bank, there was a small splash as a Skull Island egret plucked a harlequin rasbora from a passing school, and when the reptile rose to breathe again, he saw a sudden movement as a Skull Island hawk, covered in beautiful cerulean plumage with a silver-gray belly, swooped hard at the edge of a grassy bank, coming back up again with a brownish-yellow Serkis' frog in his talons. No matter what the time of day or temperature was, predation and killing never stopped on this brutal isle.

As before, he scrupulously refreshed his scent on every mound, skipping only one when he saw that a Zeropterx, one of the huge flightless terror birds with a beak like a battle-axe and as tall at the hip as a grown woman, was drinking and bathing very near to that site. Since he wasn't trying to get himself killed, he stayed away and moved on.

Finally, after tending to all of his thirty-two mounds, he reached the downstream border of his territory, finding nothing noteworthy there but a female's day-old scent. Exciting, but she wasn't there now, and the Turturcassis swam half a mile back upriver to find a safe place to rest. He found it on a small, low island covered with grass and crowned by a wide, low-growing hibiscus shrub. So, legs sprawling, he climbed up onto it, lurching over to the shrub and parking himself in its cool, sweet-smelling shade.

There, safe from big predators, he dozed away the rest of the afternoon, going out into the sun when he wanted to, and going back to the hibiscus' shade when he felt too hot. The only problem of course, was the cursed huge mosquitoes that pestered him, but he stoically ignored them as best he could.

Occasionally, he would get some measure of sweet revenge by twisting his serpentine neck and snapping up an unwary bloodsucker or two. Colored a shining dark blue with brownish wings and feathery hind legs, a buzzing vampire which would later be dubbed the Sapphire imp mosquito flew close to his head one time too many and had her career cut short with a snap. A Black's giant mosquito that whined near his ear dimple received the same sentence.

As they always did around this time of day, dark clouds swept over the river, and without further ado rain poured down as if they'd been sliced open. More or less comfortable in the cover the hibiscus provided, the Turturcassis casually watched the falling rain, and listened as it struck the river like falling pebbles. The rain felt nice and cool, and the lean reptile blinked his eyes as it landed on his head, using his tongue to lick water off the leaves and stems. The water tasted great, and just as good was the fact that it dispersed the pestering mosquitoes. With them gone, he finally could take a real nap.

While he slept, the storm continued for an hour more, then stopped as the clouds drifted away. As the sun became lower in the sky, but was still brilliantly, fiercely hot, the Turturcassis suddenly caught a scent in his tropical daybed that gave him a major wakeup call. _Female alert, female alert_, it said.

Leaping to his feet as best he could, the Turturcassis charged out of the big shrub, through the grass, and elegantly slipped into the water.

At his nearest scent mound, a 9-foot female, dirty yellow in color, had only her head out of the water, slowly moving forward as she sniffed the alluring cologne left behind. On seeing the larger male coming at her, knowing she was a stranger and in his territory, she whirled back into the deep water and faced him.

There, keeping her jaws clamped shut and pupils contracted to show she had peaceful intentions; she raised her head above the surface and bared her long throat in a submissive gesture. Even if she was a female, there was always the chance that a male's love of his territory might be slightly greater than his love for a potential partner, and a painful, raking pounding could be the result. It was important then, not to do anything that might irritate or unnerve him. Appeased by the respectful display, he took a more relaxed stance, ignoring a group of Udusaurs swimming by.

It was his turn now, and he produced a musky smell from two chin glands, hoping the female would enjoy the new perfume. She did, carefully going up to him and nosing his jaw in pleasure. He had her, and now the Turturcassis dove under the yellow female, blowing bubbles as he moved along the underside of her long neck and then at a right angle across her chest, paying special attention to the sensitive armpits. She liked the feeling, and he did this over and over for a couple minutes.

Then they both went down to the riverbed, the male leading. Disturbing a young Sepulcro, they faced each other again as they stood on the bottom. In a bizarre behavior, the male suddenly made a sideways movement with his lithe neck, biting the water to his right when it was fully extended. His dance partner did the same thing, only biting to the left. As they did this, the female's eyes suddenly widened and she stopped, looking at something behind the male.

Turning his head sideways, the Turturcassis saw another male sneaking towards them, clearly wanting to mate with the female himself. Just the mere sight filled him with the deepest kind of rage and possessiveness, and he immediately exploded off the bottom, rushing the stranger at full tilt with hooked teeth bared, his cat eyes filled with hate.

Bracing for the challenge, the stranger opened his own mouth, and they grabbed each other's jaws when they collided, preventing the other from biting. Hanging on firmly to each other, both males then went into a series of death rolls like a pair of crocodiles, crazily whirling around like a piece of woodwork being turned on a lathe.

Water sprayed and frothed as the two males rolled, the female watching from a respectful distance. Disturbed by the melee, a Swamp-wing, a bizarre gray-black frog looking like a cross between a bat and an African clawed frog, leapt from the mossy tree branch he'd been using as a perch, gliding and spastically flapping to cover.

Then the two males separated and glared at each other, snapping their jaws and biting the water at the surface. The standoff was broken when the Turturcassis charged the stranger again. Faking an attack on the right flank, he tricked the strange male into turning to the left, exposing his side. Then he smashed into the challenger in a cloud of bubbles, grabbing the other male's neck and biting down.

Desperately, all thoughts of mating gone now, the other male twisted and lunged, trying to break free as his deadly serious opponent attempted to tear out his throat. Wrenching loose, the stranger fled from the fracas as fast as his keeled tail could move him, bleeding and wide-eyed.

Still pursuing, the Turturcassis drove home the message by diving on the stranger and with a savage dart of his head, used those hooked teeth to rake him deeply along the spine. Totally frantic now, the ex-challenger put on even more speed. The territorial male let him go, satisfied now that he wouldn't be coming around again after a thrashing like that. Even reptiles can remember negative experiences.

Watching for a bit, he returned to his female spectator, and they got back to the last part of their courtship, completing it without any interruptions this time. Then, the female swam to the surface and swam into the shallows, the male right behind her. She arched her keeled tail, the male mounted her, and in fifteen seconds the deed was done.

After that, the pair returned to the deeper part of the river, a herd of gaur impassively watching from the other side as they drank. For a minute or two, the pair swam alongside each other, then drifted apart to resume their solitary lives. In two week's time, the female Turturcassis would lay a clutch of eggs in the sand.

Now the shadows were getting longer as the sun approached the horizon, and the Turturcassis' pupils dilated to catch more of the light. He rested at the surface for a bit, tired out from fighting and courting, shedding the stress in the sinking sun. Once he felt refreshed, he decided to go turtle hunting again, since his efforts had made him hungry as well.

The brilliant green water was darkening now, but the reptile could see through the twilight like it was still broad daylight. As was his custom, he was looking for another big kill, always more economical than having to spend more effort eating several smaller turtles. On a whim, he went up a large creek and entered a small, flooded swamp, half-sunken trees rising out of the water.

There were plenty of algae and water plants growing around here, and the Turturcassis knew that sooner or later, he'd encounter what he regarded as the most delicious-and hugest-turtle of all. As he slipped between tree trunks and moved with a serpentine grace around or through obstructions, the tawny hunter suddenly heard the sound of something cropping aquatic plants nearby. It was a big reptile, but this time it was no Malamagnus.

Rushing and curving in a burst of speed, the Turturcassis came up on exactly what he'd been anticipating, a green sea turtle. Normally creatures of the ocean, for some reason a population of green sea turtles, perhaps seeing an unexploited food source in the abundant deep-growing river plants, had gone and taken up residence in the largest rivers. There, they grazed on plant life, basked at the surface, and laid clutches of eggs on isolated sandbars or beaches.

Their shells and bulk protected them from most of the river's predators, even the venomous neopedes, but not Turturcassis. Seeing the fast-coming predator with his big cow eyes, the 400-pound green turtle fled, putting on a deceptive turn of speed for such a normally placid animal. But he only got about forty feet away before the even faster Turturcassis was upon him.

A green sea turtle's skull is almost the size of a large man's fist, and is a solid, fused lump of bone, even stronger than ours. That head can't be retracted like that of other turtles though, so it was all too easy for the onrushing Turturcassis to come in from the left, open those flexible jaws incredibly wide, and bite the green's head off.

Swallowing the whole thing in a few convulsive gulps, he watched as the huge turtle literally stopped dead in the darkening water and just floated. Coming back in, the turtle hunter grabbed the sea turtle's left fore flipper and dragged it through the river, searching for a place to eat this feast.

All the blood had as usual attracted those annoying Killer-eels and shingled catfish, but this time in truly big numbers. If he didn't get this turtle on land quickly, he might lose a huge amount of the kill. They might even, in the heat of their splashing feeding frenzy; decide to go for him and strip him to the bone, making it a serious matter indeed.

There was a sort of large pile of broken rock not too far away, which in turn had gathered a crude latticework of logs. On reaching it, in an amazing display of strength, the Turturcassis hauled both himself and his 400-pound catch seven feet up the sloping side, resting on the flat top. Scavengers couldn't strip his meal here, and he immediately began gorging himself as the flaming sun began to sink past the horizon, starting with the fore quarters.

As scavenging insects joined him, and fish swirled around his perch to snap up what bits fell into the water, the Turturcassis ate of his kill for almost three hours into the humid night. It wasn't just the meat and entrails he enjoyed, but the large amounts of pea-green fat that gave the green sea turtle its name, especially under the carapace. Thick, warm, energizing, tasty fat. He didn't even care that this time of day was when all the mosquitoes were really active, and of course repeatedly biting him.

Finally, after bolting down maybe two-fifths of the enormous turtle, the Turturcassis was so stuffed that he sensed another bite would've made him hurl, and stopped. After cleaning off again in the dark water, then taking a drink and a quick dip, he sluggishly returned to his kill, where he laid down nearby and loosely curled up, the moonlight shining off his supple body. Secure from predators and wonderfully stuffed, he slept. Counting the rest of the turtle he had left to eat, he wouldn't be tempted to hunt again for another two days.

In the late evening, the reptile was woken up from his meat stupor by the slow, cautious wing beats of a group of eight Pugbats arriving. With their sharp teeth and lethal bacteria in their mouths, the buff-pink flyers were hunters of not only small animals, but also young, badly wounded, and sick individuals of larger species such as Ligocristus and Sylvaceratops.

Although they were just a mere eighteen inches long, with 3-foot wingspans, they could use their needle sharp teeth to cut large blood vessels, and the virulent bacteria in their mouths-a German study would later find that there were no less than five different unique species, all deadly- caused shockingly rapid blood poisoning and even heart failure after entering the bloodstream.

As a healthy adult male in prime condition, the Turturcassis was in little danger from the antagonistic winged cynodonts. He stood his ground and belligerently hissed back all the same though. Besides being hunters of both big and small game, Pugbats would scavenge too, as long as the animal had died fairly recently and the meat was soft enough to quickly tear. The green sea turtle's remains met those criteria just fine, and that was precisely why the mammal-like reptiles had showed up.

Even with eight animals and expandable bellies, the flock wouldn't really take that much meat from the turtle, each animal needing only about a pound or two of meat at a sitting. Still, the Turturcassis wouldn't tolerate thieves, and as the Pugbats swooped and hovered around the turtle kill, he growled and hissed at the scavenging cynodonts, shambling around and over _his_ meat as best he could in his overstuffed condition.

Annoying as they were, it was difficult to get the Pugbats to take his threats and halfhearted attacks seriously when he was feeling so full and warm and comfy. Nor was he any good at moving quickly on land. If he'd been hungrier, and able to move around over the cracked rock in a quicker fashion, then he'd be able to do a better job of driving the flyers away, snapping and hissing and trying to bite their ugly bulldog heads off or snap those hunched spines.

Even better, the Pugbats were smart thieves. The reptile's brain was too small and undeveloped to comprehend what "smart" was as a concept. Yet he _did _appreciate that the miniature gargoyles had an irritating strategy of having a few members of the flock bait and tease him, leading him a short distance from his meat, while the rest would land around it, gulping down bloody hunks until he came back and chased them off.

After several rounds of this wild goose chase, the Turturcassis decided he just didn't care anymore, and flopped back down on his rotund stomach panting, letting the delighted Pugbats eat and bicker, hopping like frogs around his partly eaten green turtle. Over the next ten minutes, the horrid little hunchbacked flyers ate as much as meat as they could without compromising their ability to fly, and then took off one by one. Going back over again, the rightful owner took a few more bites himself, then went back to sleep.

During the early hours of the morning, the Turturcassis was woken up a second time by another rainstorm, this one extremely powerful and sending out huge bolts of lightening with air-shaking booms of thunder, which lasted for about an hour and a half. But he just retreated to the water, where he laid between the crumbled rock and a log, dozing while feeling the rain pelt his back.

Once the storm went away, he went back up to his original bed, falling back into sleep. The Turturcassis stayed this way until the sun started to come up and the birds began to sing, at which he groggily awoke, yawned, took a quick dip, and then happily treated himself to leftover green turtle for breakfast. As the reptile ate, a mated pair of Lycaesaurus, mammal-like reptiles about the size of coyotes and colorfully blotched with black and yellow, came to drink in the gray light at a bank far away.

They could still see and smell the Turturcassis feeding nonetheless, and eyed the scene with envy before moving on. How come he got to have such luscious meals of turtle from the placid river? But that just effortlessly came with the territory when you were built and born to be a turtle killer.

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As Tallacus and some off-line friends have suggested, I'll be using this space from now on both to point out what page number of The World of Kong each creature in a chapter can be found lurking on, and which beasts are entirely my own creations. Hopefully this will go a long way towards helping readers sort through the confusion. 

In order of appearance the cast of charactersare: Carrion Parrots, pg. 73; Turturcassis, pg. 108; Spinaculex, pg. 101; Firesides, pg. 112; Rapanatrix, pg. 113; Bloodfish, pg. 112; Segnix, pg. 113; Skull Island snapper, pg. 108; Ghoulfish, pg. 113; Killer-eels, pg. 115; Carrion centipede, pg. 70; Malamagnus, pg. 102; Dirt turtle, pg. 104; Papilio, pg. 111; Piranhadon, pg. 88; Morsel fish, pg. 112; Skull Island egret, pg. 118; Skull Island hawk, pg. 180; Zeropteryx, pg. 75; Udusaurus, pg. 106; Seplucro, pg. 111; Swamp-Wing, pg. 116; Lycaesaurus, pg. 69.

As for the creatures I've invented myself, they are: Black's giant mosquito, Naomi's nutcracker, Driscoll's shingled catfish, Jack's red crayfish, Serkis' frog, and the Sapphire imp mosquito. An inside joke is in every creature's name too of course. I also decided to have the sea turtles living in Skull Island's main river, which are loggerhead turtles in the book, be green sea turtles and live in all the large rivers. Why the change? Because it made more ecological sense to me and I just felt like it. So there. Last but not least, PLEASE review! It makes the expedition leader happy. :)


	6. Chapter 6:Axiciacephalus

Well folks, we're coming close to the end of the Rivers and Swamps section in regards to Skull Island's creatures. Just one more chapter to go! I am rather dissapointed though, that I'm not getting nearly as many reviews of any kind as I thought I would, and most of them are from the same person. 

Speaking of which..**Tallacus:** Thanks for all your reviews! They mean a lot. :) As I said, it'll be a while until I get to the chapter that's _just _about the Venatosaurs, but they do make an appearance in this one you'll be glad to know.

So, here's Chapter Six!

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Chapter Six. 

For 150 million years, pterosaurs had ruled the prehistoric skies, swooping gracefully over the heads of the dinosaurs in all sorts of amazing shapes and sizes. But all that began to change in the Early Cretaceous, when the birds finally began taking to the air in earnest.

Faster, more agile, better able to perch on limbs and quickly take off from the ground, with far less delicate wings and being more efficient fliers, they gradually outcompeted the great flying reptiles in a long, painful struggle. By the time a gigantic asteroid slammed into what is now the Yucatan region of Mexico, there were only a handful of kinds left.

But against all odds, on Skull Island something of the last pterosaurs survived, in the form of a creature called Axiciacephalus. These pterosaurs had avoided the harsh competition from birds in a practical, but bizarre way. They'd become totally flightless.

Of course, they now looked utterly unlike their extinct ancestors without wings. To respectfully paraphrase George Orwell, "All the creatures of Skull Island are weird-looking, but some creatures look weirder than others."

As the dawn began to turn the sky gray, one male Axiciacephalus carefully wove and slipped out of the thick, tangled roots of a strangler fig growing near a large hill stream. The tree that the parasitic plant had killed as it grew was long rotted away, and now the flightless pterosaur used the heart of the tangle as a home, where he and his mate could sleep in safety. Stepping out into the growing dawn, the true strangeness of his slender form was now fully revealed.

Four feet long and weighing about as much as a mid-sized dog, he had a large head with huge crocodilian jaws, both filled with needle sharp interlocking teeth for catching fish. It in turn was connected to the body by a fairly short but tubular neck. Instead of wings, his forelimbs were now small mittens of flesh, almost like miniature plesiosaur flippers had been attached. The rest of the body was a stocky, but drawn-out cone, ending in a stiff thick traffic-cone tail.

Finally, he walked on long, scaly legs like a heron, but also had webbed feet like a duck's. His feet and shins were black-brown in color, while the rest of his body was a dull orange-tan, bearing emerald-green bands running along the head and neck, with bold chestnut stripes on his back and flanks.

There was the sound of his mate coming through the roots too now, and he looked over his shoulder at her, regarding her form with his blackish eyes. The female looked very much like him as she stretched in the growing light and showed her pointed teeth in a yawn, except the small pouch she bore under her jaw was a bright yellow, with her mate's being a brick red. The tip of her beak too, didn't have as sharply curving a point as his did.

He greeted her, giving a sort of harsh cooing purr, and she did the same in response, walking up to him. A pair of passing Jackson's amber woodpeckers, foot-long birds with amber plumage, bushy crests, and black leading edges to their wings, answered with calls like a squeeze-bulb horn. Like the Denham's dark-wing, they too had evolved to fill the woodpecker niche.

Paying no attention, the male repeated his greeting, with the female responding a second time. Then, the two pterosaurs opened their toothy mouths, and gently held each other's bills in a tender moment of bonding. Just like their ancestors had done and birds of prey did now, Axiciacephalus mated for life, and had strong emotional relationships.

This morning ritual was a way of maintaining that relationship, and after several minutes of bill holding and looking into each other's eyes, they separated. Then, both animals stood parallel to each other. Facing towards the stream, the male began to gently lean against his mate's side, and she responded in kind with gentle pressure of her own.

This leaning behavior was an intimate form of physical contact, only carried out by pairs that trusted each other and had a pledged relationship between them. All the time, the two carefully used their beak tips to groom each other, running them through their mate's hair-like scales.

The tender ritual done, the two spilt apart, and then they both got down to the serious task of trail maintenance. Most animals that live in aquatic or wetland environments are very graceful, fast swimmers in the water, but are poor runners on land. The Axiciacephalus was not an exemption to this evolutionary rule either. His long legs allowed him to take much longer strides than a goose or cormorant, and his smaller size allowed him to slip and jink through underbrush more easily than his predators could.

All the same, he was still an awkward runner on dry land, and his best survival strategies were to either retreat into a tangle too dense for an attacker to enter, or even better leap into the water. In these types of situations, every second counted, and so Axiciacephalus constructed a network of smooth dirt paths, kept clean of leaf litter and debris, that radiated from the sleeping nest to the water, like half a bicycle wheel.

While his mate handled one on the left, he went to a central trail heading towards the large creek about fifty yards away, and went down it slowly. Leaves fell like anything in the rainforest, and he used his tough webbed feet to scrape away any that had fallen or been blown over the path during the night. Sticks were picked up in his beak and then flicked aside, while pebbles were also scraped off.

A small flock of hill mynas, raven black with heavy orange bills and yellow nape wattles, was on the path, calmly taking wing and flying to some low trees as the pterosaur approached them, stopping to get a drink at the creek. Now that that part of his chores was done, he returned to the strangler fig, where his mate was now working on clearing away her second trail. He immediately followed suit, doing two more before all six were bare once again. Now, the pair had that much more of a chance of escape if pursued.

Each Axiciacephalus was ready to go fishing now, and the flightless pterosaurs preferred to hunt alone, so as not to compete with each other and also to stay undetected by predators. So, with a final exchange of bows and nasal purrs, both reptiles took their leave of each other, the male heading upstream along one of their trails.

Around 150 feet away, it led him to a shallow part of the rushing creek, and he waded shin deep into the cold water, carefully searching it for fish or frogs. Going to a flat stone, he stuck his beak under the surface and flipped it over, seeing if any invertebrate prey were underneath. To his delight, two clouded long-clawed prawns, each about four inches long, scuttled out. Found only on the island, they got their name from the blotches of gray, black, and rust covering their bodies, providing good camouflage against predators. The flightless pterosaur caught each one with a fast dart of his head, crunching and swallowing in satisfaction.

Staying near the left bank, the Axiciacephalus slowly, ever so slowly, walked upstream for a hundred yards, still-hunting in the manner of a heron. On one protruding rock was a Thomas' torrent frog, another species that lived only on the island. This one, a male, had been signaling with his lavender hind feet and croaking, proclaiming ownership of his territory and also trying to attract females.

This time, the grayish frog attracted some unwanted attention instead. As the pterosaur's head darted forward, the torrent frog leapt into the water, trying to lose his attacker. The Axiciacephalus wasn't discouraged in the least, and took a prone position right away, swimming like a cormorant after his fleeing prey with back exposed. Within seconds, he'd chased down the frog and impaled his grey body on rows of needle teeth, bolting the victim down.

Rising back to his feet, the reptile continued walking through the shallows, scanning for anything edible. Now he began flicking one of his diamond shaped flippers to the side every so often as he carefully put one foot in front of the other, hoping the sudden movement would flush hidden fish from cover. Within five minutes, the strategy bore fruit.

As the Axiciacephalus flicked his flipper again, the movement disturbed a Jaguar freshwater flounder, about 11 inches long. Colored and spotted like its cat namesake, with gold-brown scales, the Jaguar freshwater flounder belonged to a group of flatfish that, like the freshwater stingrays of the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers, had evolved dramatic physiological adaptations to live in Skull Island's waterways. As meek predators of shrimps, aquatic insects, worms, and small fish, their camouflage though, the only defense they had, was of small use against the other fierce predators in the large rivers and swamps. So, the freshwater flounders now lived in the fast hill streams and creeks, where they were relatively safe and had evolved into several different species.

When pressed, a flounder can swim as fast as any trout, and the jaguar flounder spurted off the bottom, trying to get to the deeper water. But with his long, thin shins, the pterosaur was also fast in the shallows, and with a lunge, gigged the fish with the pointed tip of his beak. The flounder made a good breakfast, and the Axiciacephalus soon added to that with yet another Skull Island native, this one being a Satanic river frog, so named because of its bright crimson skin and black limbs, not to mention blazing green eyes.

Still hungry and tiring of still-hunting, the flightless reptile decided to resort to his forte; pursuing and catching fish underwater like an anhinga or cormorant. Moving away from the bank until the water was soon up to his hips, the Axiciacephalus dove under, flicking his flippers against his side and kicking with his long legs for power. His nostrils sealed, and his eyes were covered by a clear membrane or third eyelid, allowing him to see prey underwater as he swam. The water was fast, and cold, but he didn't mind. He just made sure to stay out of the main current's force whenever he could, and his body shunted warm blood away from non-vital regions.

With a large lung capacity and extra air sacs like his distant bird relatives, he could stay underwater for as long as 10-12 minutes, although he generally went only half that long between breaths. His short, fuzzy, hair-like scales also provided some minor insulation from the cold. This realm of rushing water, of gravel and sand, streams of bubbles and worn brown logs, rapids, eddies, whitewater, all brilliantly illuminated by the sun-this was his home to a degree that even the fig tree could never match. The stream was his song.

Elation is a reward built in by nature because it motivates animals to keep on doing what's good for their species. The Axiciacephalus swam submerged not just to feed, but because it gave him pleasure. He liked feeling the current against his body. He liked the feeling of power and grace he got as he moved his limbs and slipped like an otter through the bubbly water. He liked looking for the dark, small outlines of fish against the sunlight. And it gave him pleasure to catch one.

As he swam, he stopped to poke at some dead, rotting leaves that had collected in a small depression. Out came a Rufus stream shrimp, about the length of a man's thumb. As it jerked backwards, the diving pterosaur grabbed it, and then took his snack back to the surface, where he promptly ate the shrimp. Taking another breath, the Axiciacephalus returned, rooting out two more Rufus stream shrimp, which underwent the same demise as the first. After that, there was nothing, and he moved on.

Fish were fairly spread out in these kinds of habitats, and the diving pterosaur had to inspect every last place where fish might be seeking shelter out of the current. Taking another breath, he dove again, and went to some large boulders that stuck above the surface. Their downstream sides were great places for fish to rest, and he quickly found a Shagfish, 9 inches long and colored burnt orange with three black bands, partly hidden in the sand. Although it was built almost like a loaf of bread, the Shagfish quickly leapt up with deceptive speed and darted away. The Axiciacephalus was faster again though, and caught the orangish fish, gulping it down like a crocodile at the surface in his spiky jaws.

It was midmorning now, and the pterosaur tirelessly kept at his hunting. Up ahead was another flat slab of rock, a potential hiding place for prey that just begged to be checked out. This one was too big to possibly flip over though, so he just probed under it with his toothy beak. Suddenly, a golden yabby, an endemic crayfish named after close relatives in Australia, fled out into the open. The reptile caught and ate it easily.

Taking another breath, he went to investigate another large depression filled with dead leaves. His poking yielded a Hasselt's catfish, 7 inches long that had been hiding there until nightfall. It too, was promptly seized. Further probing uncovered a mocha brown Watts' rope eel, about 10 inches in length and bearing markings like-well, like a woven rope. Eels are very fast swimmers indeed, and the diving pterosaur was run on a merry chase for a few moments before he was able to clamp down on the eel's tail and position it in his toothy jaws for swallowing headfirst.

At the surface, the Axiciacephalus rested for a brief while now after eating the eel in the slower waters near the right bank, idly watching a mixed flock of Asian fairy-bluebirds, green broadbills, straw-headed bulbuls, and blue-crowned hanging parrots as they fed on the ripe berries of two trees growing near the far bank. With them were some fruit-eating Trident chameleons, handsome green Martial parrots, and the maroon-red gliding lizards known as Alatusaurus, all endemic to the island. With so much fruit for the taking, the animals didn't bother each other as they fed and fluttered.

After taking a breather for a few minutes, he dove again to search out a few more fish. The cold water was becoming too much for even him now, and he wanted to get a full crop of fish soon, so he could soak up some sun on a log or rock slab. Fortunately, the sun's bright light illuminated the stream like a baseball stadium now, making his efforts to detect fish even easier.

Soon, that light revealed to him another freshwater flounder lying on the gravel. Belonging to a different species called Kyle's black-speckled freshwater flounder, its gray body, mottled with dark tan and black, helped hide it in plain sight. The Axiciacephalus though, wasn't so easily fooled, and swiftly grabbed the flatfish behind the gills.

The foot-long flounder was undeniably a good meal, and the diving reptile's crop was close to full by now. Diving again, he suddenly got the chance to put all his swimming and hunting skills to practice. Silhouetted against the light was a feeding school of another fish species only found on Skull Island, which would become to be known as Boyen's fusilier cichlids. Eaters of plankton and insect larvae, the six-inch long fish had pointed heads with large copper eyes and elongate electric blue bodies with gray-pink bellies. Their dorsal and anal fins were handsomely backswept, blue-black in color, and the tail fin was fluorescent orange with black edges.

These stream-dwelling cichlids were clearly built for speed and agility, and they promised to be hard work for any pursuing Axicicephalus to capture. The male was fast and agile though, and immediately shot towards the thirty-strong school. The fusilier cichlids saw him coming, and fled, twisting, dodging, and turning through the greenish water at breakneck speed.

Like an otter after a trout, the flightless pterosaur would lock onto one of the electric blue fish, maneuvering with amazing precision as he tried to trap it against the bottom or chase it into the shallows of the stream where it could be more easily caught. Sometimes he'd try to corner one of the fish against the surface, leading to electrifying moments where the desperate cichlid would leap out of the water, the reptile's spiked jaws shooting out after it in a big splash.

Sometimes one of the agile fish escaped, but several times the Axiciacephalus rose to the surface with a Boyen's fusilier cichlid in his jaws. He pursued the school for eight minutes, catching as many fish during that time, until he was finally satiated. And nor had he been the only predator to dine on fusilier cichlid.

As a trio of the fish had fled from him along the stream bottom, they'd suddenly stumbled open a small sunken log that sheltered a waiting _Aspiscimex_. Rushing out, the 22-inch distant relative of centipedes grabbed one of the blue fish around the chest with her sharp forelegs and pinned it to the gravel.

Although it didn't have venom like other neopedes, _Aspiscimex _did have razor-sharp slicing jaw plates as its weapons. And without any ceremony, she promptly used them to cut the fish's throat. At nearly a third of her length, the Boyen's fusilier cichlid was a very good catch, and the neopede swam back with this trophy to the log, where she soon started in on a feast that would last the rest of the day.

As for the pterosaur, he'd had a good morning of fishing, and decided to find a good place to sit and digest his crop full of fish in the warm sun. Rising to the surface again, he breathed and slowly swam upriver, feeling the warm sun on his back while he looked for a nice sunbathing site.

It was approaching noon now, and the creatures that had practically driven his kind out of the air, the birds, were flying and feeding everywhere, their bright plumage standing out against the green canvas of the jungle. Greater racket-tailed drongos sallied forth from their posts, grabbing insects like dragonflies out of the air, and plucking crawling ones like beetles from twigs. Red-bearded bee-eaters, lovely dark green birds with red throats and foreheads went about the same activity, giving chuckling calls as if insect catching was the most joyous thing in the world. Red carrion parrots squawked and flapped as they fed on the remains of a large lungfish named _Panderichthyis_, and a male Asian paradise flycatcher, with a black head, ivory body, and most of all two gorgeous white tail feathers three times longer than he was, flew out like a living comet to grab a damselfly.

A white-collared kingfisher, teal green above with a white collar, breast, and belly, plunged into the clear water, coming back up with a common barb. As the Axiciacephalus passed under an overhanging tree, he casually noted the osprey perched on it, eating a tinfoil barb that he'd just caught. In a big flowering hibiscus bush, gray-breasted spiderhunters, olive-backed sunbirds, emerald green Brightbirds, blue-crowned hanging parrots, and a Honey tongue chameleon all imbibed the sweet nectar from the scarlet flowers.

The pterosaur had no interest in nectar or insects. But he did find what he was looking for just as quickly as the birds had. There was a smaller creek going into the larger one on the right bank, and close to that was a nice wide sandbar, an excellent resting site for him.

Swimming over, the Axiciacephalus stood up, and sniffed with cautious interest as he stood in the shallows. At only four feet long and weighing about as much as a mid-sized dog, he didn't have much hope if a bigger predator attacked him on land before he could get to the water. His spiked teeth were certainly weapons to be respected, but many potential predators like Venatosaurus, Foteodon, Dinocanisaurus, and young Vastatosaurus rexes also had armored skin to boot, meaning that they were unlikely to notice or care.

The only sign of predators was the two day-old scent of where a group of adolescent Vastatosaurs had come here to drink, and they were probably long gone by now. The freshest scent and tracks of _all_ theland animals were from this morning-but the pterosaur could tell that it was from a herd of Ligocristus, totally harmless duckbills. In fact, sometimes he'd even swim or walk among the plant-eaters while they crossed a creek or drank, catching any fish the giants flushed from cover.

The Ligocristus had also left behind some droppings, which were now surrounded by all sorts of lovely butterflies. As the Axiciacephalus stepped out onto the sand flat, the disturbed insects fluttered off before and around him in a rainbow of colors. He gave himself a few quick shakes to remove excess water, than squatted down on the warm sand a couple yards from the edge. Facing the forest at an angle, the gangly reptile sat back on his furred haunches, belly full, mind peaceful and content as he soaked up the now noonday sun.

The butterflies flapped and swirled peacefully around his seated crocodilian form, which gave him even more pleasure. Although the Axiciacephalus didn't possess anything like the refined, civilized human appreciation for beauty or the ability to find it in his world, he was still a fairly smart animal, and could see color just as well as any bird or primate. And he did know, dimly, that beautiful colors like the ones borne by the butterflies always lifted his spirits and were satisfying to him.

Feeling content as a flightless pterosaur could possibly be, he kept his position on the big sand bar for two hours, listening to bird and insect calls, sniffing every so often and scanning the jungle to make certain no predators were stalking him-although they'd find it difficult to sneak across the fair-sized expanse of sand in broad daylight to begin with-and snapping in irritation at some of the omnipresent huge mosquitoes that left the shade of the trees to demand their pint of blood. Whenever he felt it was safe enough to completely let down his guard, which was often, the Axiciacephalus would lie down on his belly or side like a seal, happily broiling away in the tropical sun as he digested his fish and shrimp meal, panting away any excess heat and raising his toothy elongated head periodically to check for any danger.

The only animals that showed up were harmless ones. As the butterflies drank the nutrient and mineral-rich fluids from the Ligocristus dung, they in turn attracted the occasional insectivore. With extreme caution, three of the bizarre two-tailed Flizards called Novusaurus warily scrambled out of the jungle one by one to feed around duckbill pies that were closest to its border.

Creatures of the jungle understory and canopy, they used their host of now tucked-back gliding membranes to cross any gaps between branches and quickly escape from predators. But on the sand, there were no high places to glide from, and they were totally vulnerable. Still, the weird green Flizards only ate nothing but butterflies, and such a waiting smorgasbord couldn't be passed up. As long as the Novusaurus trio stayed close to the trees, they'd likely be all right.

An even larger cousin, a large male Goliath Flizard, soon joined them. At a foot long, the tawny reptile was the largest of his family, with his chunky dragon-like head and two short brow horns giving him quite an imposing appearance. He too, had descended from the trees to hunt the butterflies. As a better, faster, climber and runner than Novusaurus, the Goliath Flizard felt confident enough to fully expose himself on the sand, where he chased and snapped up the lovely insects. As for his cousins, although the beige lizard didn't eat reptile, they still gave him a prudent berth.

Frogs croaked and peeped in the sultry air along the banks, and on the far bank, a flock of iridescent greenish-purple Nicobar pigeons, jungle nomads with collars of long, spiky neck feathers, flew down to drink from the shallow edge and quickly bathe before flying off again. The pigeons weren't the only ones craving water in the heat of the day. Scattering the nervous butterflies like a rainbow of confetti and sending the Flizards hastily running up the nearest trees, the now panting Axiciacephalus himself got back to his feet, walking hip deep into the cold creek and drinking.

Like a bird, he submerged his lower jaw and pouch and let them fill with water, then tilted it up to let it pour down his gullet. After doing this several times, the pterosaur felt good and refreshed. Submerging, he cooled off further by joyously rolling and gamboling in the crystal water for several minutes, making it roil as he exposed all sorts of random body parts above the surface, even his kicking dark legs.

That done, he rested in the water briefly, considering his next action. He really felt like going back to sunbathe some more, but now he felt slightly hungry again. Deciding that it wouldn't take too long to get a snack, he turned left and headed up the smaller stream.

This stream was slower-moving then the one he'd just left, and was more closely shaded by trees, but still had plenty good visibility. Finding a log, he poked under it with his beak and flushed out another golden yabby, which he ate. Wanting a bit more food, when he reached a shallow riffle he stood up and went back to stalking again.

Seeing the black, squat form of a saffron-bellied river toad sitting among some leaves on the bank nearby, he slowly turned and began to stalk it. One front in front of the other, he got closer to the plum-sized toad, stopping whenever he felt it noticed him. Finally, he was close enough, and caught the black toad after a quick chase. Briefly, he displayed the slick toad's trademark saffron yellow belly, reticulated with black, and then swallowed it down.

The next toad the flightless pterosaur encountered though was off limits as a meal. The Asian river toad is an absolute beast of a creature, weighing several pounds and able to gulp down rats. There was no way he could swallow this massive warty amphibian, and nor would he have tried anyway.

Besides its imposing size, the river toad was also able to produce toxic chemicals from skin glands, which could fatally poison any predator. Because of this, river toads were one of the few animals able to go where they pleased on this deadly isle. Even dim-witted Foteodon, the huge land crocodile whose motto was "If it moves, eat it now," knew better than to bite into a river toad.

Yawning, the Axiciacephalus allowed the river toad to calmly hop away while he continued walking upstream. As he kept at his still hunting, he came to an area of the stream with scattered water plants, and was fairly deep for wading. It was a good place to just stand still and grab small fish, and so he took up position. The forest stream was home to elegant rasboras, pale, greenish brown fish with silvery flanks and two blue-black blotches, one at the base of the tail, the other right in the center.

As he stood, a school of the five-inch fish returned, swirling around over the sand. Cautiously, he stepped forward, and grabbed one of the school's members with a dart of his crocodile head. Over the next ten minutes, slowly stalking, the pterosaur captured and ate three more rasboras until his hunger was sated.

After that, he walked back downstream, warily pausing to circle around and suspiciously eye a large reticulated python that had arrived to soak in the stream. At 12 feet long, this snake could constrict a goat with ease, and certainly an Axiciacephalus as well if it got too close. Wisely, this one didn't give the bathing python the chance.

On approaching the mouth, he submerged again, swimming out into the big stream and then standing up to walk back onto the sandbar. This time, he scattered not only the butterflies, but also a foraging flock of beautiful red jungle fowl, running and fluttering away like their chicken descendants.

He sat down again, enjoying the even hotter early afternoon sun, and doing what he could to drive away the Sapphire Imp and Black's giant mosquitoes that left the cool shade to drink his blood. The pterosaur stayed like this for maybe fifty minutes. Then, he heard the sound of mid-sized, but still big, dinosaurs moving through the jungle underbrush toward his sandbar. A whole herd of them.

Immediately, the Axiciacephalus got to his feet and inelegantly trotted back to the water, where he promptly leapt in and submerged, wheeling around with only his head and neck exposed above the surface. Then, unhurriedly cantering out of the green forest and out on the sand, came a two dozen strong herd of _Sylvaceratops_. Up to 16 feet long, the beige dinosaurs were common forest herbivores, beautifully ornamented over much of their bodies with black zebra stripes.

In the heat of the day, they'd come down only to drink of the cool water, and as gentle plant-eaters posed no threat to the Axiciacephalus. Identifying them, the male relaxed, but still kept his distance from the dinosaurs as he floated in the water. He had no problem with closely approaching or even swimming among dinosaurian herbivores that were in the water, but he found it very discomfiting to be among them on land.

Leaving the drinking Sylvaceratops herd, he swam downstream this time, having had enough sun for the day and feeling hungry again. Prodding under another big rock yielded a 9-inch Jack's red crayfish, which soon fell to his beak.

Besides fish and crustaceans, the diving pterosaur also liked to eat large insects when he could. Seeing a big emerald and gold Adrien's dragonfly perched on a log, he very carefully stalked it like a crocodile, keeping only his eyes and nose above the water. Then, with one decisive snap, he plucked the dragonfly from its perch.

Diving again, he saw a climbing perch in a clump of grass near the bank. Rushing forward, he chased down the 10-inch long grayish silver fish and swallowed it at the surface. Still going with the stream's flow more or less, the reptile soon picked out a school of five-inch spanner barbs, named because of an interesting perpendicular marking.

With the same otter-like agility he'd shown with the fusilier cichlids, he immediately went for the school, twisting and snapping after individual fish and skewering them on his needle teeth, every bit as comfortable upside down as right side up. Before the school finally regrouped and escaped, he captured four of the fish, and followed that up with a clouded long-clawed prawn that had foolishly bolted from its rock shelter in all the commotion.

It was quite hot and humid now, and most birds and animals were now either resting or having a drink. The Axicicephalus strongly felt like doing the same.

But then he was distracted. As he swam back downstream towards his fig tree, keeping near the right bank, he saw some white things flying around. He decided to inspect them more closely, and saw that they were flying termites, released from their self-imposed internment by the stimulus of the rains.

The genetic future of the colony, they seemed to grace the air like live confetti. Once they drifted back to earth, the alates would shuck their wings and desperately search for a mate. Having paired off, they'd return to the secure comfort of their dark underworld to start colonies of their own, and eventually raise new mounds to grace Skull Island's meadows and rainforests.

For most though, the flight would only lead to death in a predator's mouth, and the flightless pterosaur, seeing so many insects, was happy to do his part. Standing up, he began snapping the termites out of the air, and delicately plucking them off the vegetation.

Soon, he'd eaten all that he could reach. The mound these alates had come from was several hundred yards into the jungle, and there would be more and more as one got closer. So with guarded caution, he left the water's edge, nervously stopping to roughly scrape away much of the leaf litter as he walked deeper into the green forest, stopping to grab and eat the fat-rich termites as he went.

Getting closer, the Axiciacephalus could hear birds, a whole host of them. On reaching the monolithic castle of clay, he found himself absolutely surrounded by flying termites, and birds that had come to feed on them. There was a blue Skull Island hawk, walking right on the ground and picking up termites with her hooked beak while her mate grabbed them out of the air in his talons. Blue and yellow Dapper crows plucked them off branches and the forest floor as a Skull Island hornbill stood right on the mound itself, engulfing alates in his cavernous ivory beak.

A pair of Sordid _Profanornis_ and their month-old chicks strutted around, crushing the insects in their huge bills, as a flock of red jungle fowl fed almost alongside them. Asian paradise flycatchers, red-bearded, blue-tailed, and blue-throated bee-eaters, and racket-tailed drongos swooped back and forth, grabbing winged termites in midair.

Hill mynas, crested jays, and yellow-green common ioras gleaned them in noisy flocks, with Feather Devils lunging at the fat-rich insects as they moved across the tree trunks. In the leaves themselves, the alates fell victim to mantids, wolf spiders, arboreal crabs, centipedes, katydids, orb-weaving spiders, and lots of ants.

Plenty of action and killing, that was for sure, but none of it was the kind to threaten the Axiciacephalus' welfare. With all diners being utterly focused on the same food supply, there was little fuss as he joined the feast, strutting around and doing his very best to eat all the energy-rich flying termites he could.

Being so unusually far from the water, with a very rough escape trail did make him nervous of course, but all these birds would make it near impossible for any predator to catch him unawares. The number of termites he ate was beyond counting, as he happily worked the area during the next twenty minutes.

But the fat-rich insects also attracted other predators as well, ones that ate bugs only infrequently, but were _always _killers of much bigger game. And Venatosaurus could kill the biggest of all.

Unbeknownst to the Axiciacephalus, two of the raptors, belonging to the smaller species _impavidus_, were silently creeping through the jungle undergrowth toward him. These two were sisters from the same pack, and while the rest of the group was taking a siesta, they'd decided to go on a short forage, checking out one of the nearby termite mounds to snack on the little flying packets of fat that they knew came out in such abundance at this time of year.

It was a smart move, and the Venatosaurs didn't stop there. They knew that they wouldn't be the only ones interested in the termites, and as they'd come closer, the sisters had switched to stalking mode, ready to take the opportunity to nab any large birds or monitor lizards that might be present.

The two raptors didn't see the Axiciacephalus until the termite mound was in clear view. Without words though, they just glanced at each other sideways, for the briefest moment, and each sister just _knew_ that he was the prey. With amazing stealth for such big carnivores, they began to move apart.

The pterosaur had no idea he was being targeted. Still feeding, his only indication of danger was when the larger birds suddenly began calling in alarm. Then, they flew away in a whirring of wings, and the Profanornis family instantly gathered their chicks to them and ran away at speed, uttering croaking calls of agitation.

Without even thinking, the Axiciacephalus turned and began to run for the river as fast as his awkward legs would carry him. Seconds later, all the smaller birds exploded into flight as the pair of Venatosaurs rushed out, eager for the kill, with the dappled light shining off their sickle claws.

The flightless pterosaur had a good lead. But his path had been crudely made. The water's safety was several hundred yards away. And the Venatosaur sisters were faster than he was. If they caught up with him, he would have about as much chance of fighting them off as a rabbit with a coyote.

One of the raptors was coming at him from the right, and he desperately put on more speed, trying not to trip. The dinosaur would've had him within seconds, if she hadn't suddenly run right into another flock of red jungle fowl that had been eating termites. Even at the size of a domestic horse, she never passed up a chance to catch small prey when hungry, and went from running to leaping in a split second, grabbing two of the fleeing birds in her jaws.

The fortunate distraction gave the terrified Axiciacephalus a few more seconds of lead. But the other raptor was still chasing him. Nor did her sister take long to eat her poultry, and went back to the chase. Seeing the roiling stream now through the trees, he went even faster, almost feeling the Ventatosaurs on his tail.

Reaching the edge successfully, he dropped to his belly even before he was off dry land, and arrowed into the cold water like an escaping frog. This part of the stream was deep thankfully, and the churning, white, lightly silted water helped to mask his form even further.

As he used his flippers and toes to oh-so-delicately move across the bottom like a hippo, the pterosaur could now hear the sisters splashing into the stream themselves. They hadn't seen him actually go into the water, but they were pretty good at deducing things. They knew all about his tricks too, and split up, one standing on a large boulder, while her sister perched on a small gravel bar, scanning the water with their cat eyes.

The Axiciacephalus just kept still as possible, sneaking away from any place where he heard one of the raptors splash. Now, the Venatosaur sisters were just randomly, persistently searching, jumping from stepping stone to stepping stone, and wading in the cold water up to their hips.

The huntresses were hard pressed to detect any swirls or movements in the water that would betray the hidden pterosaur's presence, what with all the water moving so fast. But they didn't despair, for they had another advantage. Sooner or later, their prey would have to surface to breathe.

Staying as collected as he could, the Axiciacephalus had been underwater for almost eight minutes. His body was craving more oxygen now, but he also knew that if he rose to breathe, his stalkers would know right where he was, and be upon him in a second. Fortunately, he had a cunning solution to this unenviable dilemma.

Slowly, quietly, he crawled on his flippers and toes over to the right bank, undercut by the fast current. There, taking care to make his head look like nothing more than a stick, and concealed by the overhang's shade, he slowly exhaled, inhaled several times, then sunk down again. Then he picked his way back to the deeper part in the main current.

Seconds later, one of the raptor sisters happened to come to that spot, wading through the shallower water as she tirelessly looked for the hidden prey that she knew was very near. Standing on another boulder, her sister was scanning another part of the stream nearby, when she saw a submerged shape that looked very like the quarry they were after. Without any hesitation, she leapt, the other raptor already splashing through the water towards her, expecting a share of the kill.

Below the surface, the Axiciacephalus briefly saw the Venatosaur's lean body above him, dark against the light. She was going to splash down close, and he got ready to just swim for his life in a last-ditch attempt to escape, not caring if it gave him away. But he didn't have to, and heard a splash of water, then a jarring impact, then a screech of shock and surprise.

The Venatosaur had chosen wrongly. She'd unknowingly aimed for a sunken rock that had resembled a flightless pterosaur, and only received a painful bash to the legs for her efforts. This was very discouraging.

Now the sky was partly cloudy, making it even more difficult to see below the water. Both raptor sisters were cold, tired, and having no luck. Deciding that the game wasn't worth the prize, they left their boulder perches, splashed out of the stream, shook themselves, and went back to the termite mound. It wasn't worth using up so much time and energy when there were so many tasty winged termites for the taking.

The Axiciacephalus heard the raptors leaving the stream. He had to breathe again, and as before, slowly moved over to the shade of the bank to warily expose just the top of his head and breathe. Edgily, he sunk below again, and slunk back to the middle of the stream again, listening quietly. He knew that the Venatosaur pair had left the water. But were they now standing on the shore, waiting for him to give his position away by some overconfident gesture?

In actual fact, both his stalkers were now picking up, gathering, and eating handfuls of alates, but the pterosaur, not knowing that, picked his way downstream for several dozen yards before finally getting up enough courage to surface next to the cover of a colossal boulder. The Venatosaurus were gone, and he slowly relaxed.

After such a traumatic encounter, the Axiciacephalus wasted little time in leaving that stretch of water. He felt full, and wanted to get back to his fig tree, where his mate would likely be too. As he started to see his familiar section of stream bank up ahead, the dark clouds suddenly burst open, unleashing torrents of rain on the jungle.

A creature of the water, he didn't mind rain at all, and ignored it as he stepped out onto land, walking along his path to the strangler fig. His mate wasn't there, but it didn't worry him as he picked his way though the maze of columned roots and squatted on the wet leaves.

The fig tree provided fairly good protection from the rain, and not just for the pterosaur. Insects and spiders also came in to stay dry, the reptile occasionally having one for a snack. Now, he took the time to groom himself, running the tip of his sharp bill through his filament scales, working on every place from his tail to his flippers to his chest. His feet he used to take care of places his beak couldn't reach, the claws combing through the coat covering his wonderfully peculiar-looking head and neck

Soon, his mate showed up to join him, her dark form also weaving among the rain-slick roots. She'd also eaten well, and he happily greeted her with a cooing purr. She did the same, and then they clacked their beaks together for several seconds before she sat down.

Affectionate greetings over, the two Axiciacephalus sat down and just looked at the pouring rain, mumbling, quietly croaking, and beak-clapping as if they were telling each other about the day's adventures. And it might be that they were. During that time, there was some additional diversion when a mated pair of huge, red-headed Diablosaurus passed by, an odd, armor-encrusted dinosaur that looked very much like a reptilian white rhino-except it was at least five times heavier and more massive.

Although they looked like they had to be related to ceratopsians like Triceratops or for that matter the Sylvaceratops that roamed these jungles, they were actually evolved sauropods, which for some reason had filled the same ecological niche that rhinos filled in the Sumatran rainforest only a few hundred miles away. Grunting and snorting as they walked together through the forest, the two Diablosaurs seemed oblivious to the rain pelting the bosses, pebbles, truncated thick spikes, and thick scutes of bone mailing their backs.

To the Axiciacephalus respectfully watching from the inner sanctum of their fig tree, the strange red-headed dinosaurs seemed like giants beyond size, forces of nature as they squinted at the world with their weak, lizard-lidded eyes, dark monoliths against the sheets of rain as the big herbivores munched ferns and forest herbs.

The dinosaur pair, with the lazy, relaxed attitude that proclaimed they had nothing to fear from predators, took their time grazing their way across the pterosaur's field of vision. Even when the twin colossuses moved away far enough so that the pouring rain finally swallowed them, their grunting, heavy footfalls, and grinding of ferns could still be heard for a surprising length of time before that too, was lost to the storm.

When the rain stopped, the pair stood up, shaking off whatever rainwater had gotten to them inside the strangler fig's ramparts as the sun returned. His mate leading, the pterosaurs stepped out into the dripping forest, and drank from what pools of water remained before they soaked into the humus and soil. Their real objective though, was to once again, tend to their trails after this rain.

The leaves and twigs on the jungle trees were pretty sturdy and built for rains. Nonetheless, some always were dislodged by a jungle shower, and as far as the Axiciacephalus were concerned, it was best to remove these impediments on their escape trails sooner rather than later. As before, they split apart, each animal taking on a trail for themselves, and using feet or beak to remove any new objects.

There weren't many to dispose of this time, and the Axiciacephalus soon met his mate again back on their central trail. As diurnal creatures, they innately noted that the sun was steadily approaching the horizon. Still, there was a good amount of broad daylight left.

Now, the female turned and gently nudged her mate's throat pouch with the tip of her beak. Then she uttered a pensive, almost thoughtful groan. He knew what that meant. She was basically saying, in human terms, "I'm going to go hunting again for a bit. Want to join me?"

As they'd gone about most of the day alone, both of them had had a very successful day of fishing. Nevertheless, each animal did feel a little hungry again, having no problem at all with the idea of a small dinner before they retired for the night. The flightless pterosaur responded with a sweeping bow, accepting his partner's invitation.

So together, they walked down to the stream, keeping alert for any predators. A paradise tree snake crawled from a bush to a higher tree branch on seeing them, and a lime-green Aerosaur, a gliding lizard with great webbed feet and limb membranes smoothly swooped from the leafy branches of one great tree to another above their heads.

As if to remind the pair that tranquility and indeed, life itself were always just brief illusions, things never to be taken for granted on this horribly savage island, a lone straw-headed bulbul came shooting out above and in front of them. Automatically, the Axiciacephalus tensed, then turned to run right back to their nest. They knew from instinct and experience that if they saw another animal fleeing, that meant a predator and they'd sure better either run or leap into the nearest stream pretty quickly!

But this time, it was just a Howler that shot across their field of vision, uttering an occasional roaring, drawn-out boom of excitement as he stayed hard on the frantic bulbul's tail. Although they were no threat to the diving pterosaurs, Howlers were still nothing to sneeze at with a 4-5 foot wingspan and protruding incisor teeth. In appearance, the silvered-gray creatures looked very much like an obscene genetic cross between a flying fox and a howler monkey.

Their dangling, pinkish, rat-tails though, gave away their true ancestry. Many people mistakenly believe that bats are mice or rats with leathery wings. In fact, bats are more closely related to primitive primates like lemurs or tree shrews then to rodents. Bats show so many characteristics that are totally unique, that they are classified in their very own exclusive order. Even us humans, lords of all creation, can't lay claim to that status.

Howlers however, were descended from true rats, rodents that had taken to the air and branched out to claim most of the niches bats would normally occupy elsewhere on Skull Island. With their large eyes, they could efficiently navigate the jungle gloom to chase and catch lizards, insects, rodents, spiders, centipedes, and -and birds.

Cautiously, the two Axiciacephalus picked up their pace as they then heard the bulbul give a shriek three hundred yards into the canopy, the victorious Howler seizing it with his incisor teeth right in the air. Reaching the stream then, the female dove into the water first, and he followed seconds later.

Although the Axiciacephalus was very accomplished at fishing alone, and usually did feed that way, hunting with a mate could make it much easier to search out hiding fish, and especially to head off and corral schooling fishes. Keeping about eight feet apart, the two swam roughly side by side as they prodded with their beaks under rocks and gazed for fish through their third eyelids.

Jabbing under a large rock, he drove out a clouded long-clawed prawn and a Rufus stream shrimp. The pterosaur caught the prawn immediately, but his mate got the shrimp for herself. A few minutes later, his mate was investigating a buildup of silt in front of a log when a Black freshwater flounder suddenly shot out from its cover. Immediately, she pursued, but the Axiciacephalus was faster, and the flounder went to him.

It seemed like a case of take-as-take-can, but the advantage of fishing in pairs soon came into play when his mate saw a school of Naomi's pearl catfish ahead of them. Eight inches long, they were colored pearly blue above with a hint of pale amber on the head and back, their bellies colored a silvery blue with some pink. Four pairs of very long barbells sprayed outwards from around their mouths, with large blue eyes giving the catfish a somewhat shocked look.

Right now, they had reason to be, for although these lovely catfish had clearly evolved a color scheme that would hide them in plain sight, it didn't prevent them from being targeted by the flightless pterosaurs. Now, with his mate to assist him, the male's fishing became a lot easier. Lunging and turning, they worked together as a team, heading off the catfish school when it tried to escape, forcing them into a smaller area when it tried to spread out, and using their jabbing bills to drive out any Naomi's pearl catfish that tried to hide among water plants or rock crevices, often into the jaws of their mate.

Again and again, the result was that each Axiciacephalus rose to the surface with one of the pearly catfish in their teeth, manipulating it just the right way so as not to take a nasty jab in the mouth from a fin spine. The pair's efforts fed other mouths too. Spying the commotion, a white-bellied sea eagle flew down, plucking one of the catfish from the stream as it fled from its attackers. Twice more she did this, taking advantage of the perfect chance to nab prey that the diving pterosaurs had inadvertently set up before returning to her roost for the night. Another Aspiscimex, always ready for an ambush, rushed out from the shade of an undercut section of bank to dig the points of his forelegs into one of the fleeing fish, quickly exposing its insides to the water with a brutal slice from his mandibles.

The school was large, but the sun was now throwing long shadows over the stream. The two Axiciacephalus were having a successful time catching the pearly catfish, and were reluctant to quit. But predators often used the twilight hours as a prime time to stalk and catch prey, and it was best for their safety that they left the water now rather than later.

So, after eating one last catfish, the Axiciacephalus and his mate swam back upstream to their familiar "landing," spooking a blue whistling-thrush that'd been wading through the gravel shallows as it foraged for insect nymphs, its silvery feather tips catching the setting sun as it flew off in a whirr of dark blue feathers.

After warily sniffing the air, and not detecting any danger, the male stepped out with his mate, and they trotted back to their strangler fig home without incident. As the pair settled down and began to gently groom each other, a barn owl gave its long, quavering screech somewhere nearby, while a nightjar gave a series of sharp calls which sounded so much like a man chopping wood, both proclaiming the arrival of the night.

Like it always did in the tropics, the sun dipped beneath the horizon quickly, and after separating from his mate, the Axiciacephalus walked a few feet away, and used his feet to scrape out a rough hollow in the leaf litter. Then, as his beloved mate did the same, he yawned and sat down, and then stretched out in the hollow, sprawled on his belly.

Yawning again as the darkness came, he shifted once, twice, several times to get comfortable, then went to sleep. Both animals slept soundly, always with a part of their subconscious standing sentry for any danger that might infiltrate their shelter, for several hours.

Then, with a crash, the pterosaur and his mate were rudely awakened in the early morning by a very powerful thunderstorm, lightening stabbing through the night sky like daggers, and crashes of thunder that rivaled rockslides. Cowed by nature's power, both animals pressed up against each other for reassurance as the lightening cracked and rain bucketed down, lashing the leaves of the trees. There was nothing to do but just stay put and hope for the best as rain lashed them even among the roots.

Even more unnerving, the herds of big dinosaurs were spooked by this meteorological tantrum, with Ligocristus, Sylvaceratops, and Brontosaurus groups running around for suitable cover, or just in willy-nilly stampedes, mad with fear. Several times the pterosaur could see the legs of the huge herbivores pounding by through the latticework of roots, and the air rang with their groans, yells, brays, and bellows.

But eventually, as if satisfied with all the chaos it had caused, the storm died down and moved away through the dark sky as the stars slowly reappeared. Separating from his mate's side, the Axiciacephalus quickly forgot all about the storm's savagery, and went back to sleep in his now somewhat moist bed.

A few hours after that, the first rays of the rising sun once again began to turn the black, wet darkness of Skull Island's jungles the faintest hint of grey again. It penetrated into the strangler fig, and the female was the first to respond to it. As she yawned, then got to her feet, her noise woke the Axiciacephalus up, and he sat erect on his thighs. There was a large ground beetle crawling across the leaf litter off to his side. Without even having to get up, he plucked the green-black insect off the leaves with his beak, and had his first bit of breakfast as the voices of the birds rang in the dawn air.

He got up then, and followed his female out of their nest. He might not ever be able to ride the wind like his ancestors had done so well for so long, but he still had the water. And that was the next best thing.


End file.
